


A Summer for Burning

by thesepossessedbylight



Category: Holby City
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ancient Rome, Alternate Universe - Historical, Boudicca's rebellion, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:20:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23623795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesepossessedbylight/pseuds/thesepossessedbylight
Summary: Serena Cam Beul Metella is Londinium's top wine merchant, supplying wine to the most exclusive Roman parties in Londinium and beyond. Despite being the child of British parents and witnessing the growth of the Roman occupation, she's proud of the business she's built up over the years and the status she now holds in Londinium. But when Boudicca, the enraged Queen of the Iceni, sacks Londinium and Serena is injured in the melee, she's saved by Berenice, a British-born freedwoman and one of Boudicca's faithful lieutenants. As they fall in love, Serena's loyalties are tested.[Parts of this fic were posted a couple of years ago; it's now been edited and completed so please reread!]
Relationships: Serena Campbell/Bernie Wolfe
Comments: 69
Kudos: 100





	1. Chapter 1

> … I call down as witness the spirit of the gods, hostile to me,  
>  the ashes of my motherland, and you, the ruler of Phrygia,  
>  whom Troy covers, buried by his whole kingdom,  
>  and your ghost, with whom standing, Ilium stood.  
>  And you, the great flocks of my children,  
>  less mighty shades: whatever calamity Apollo’s priestess predicted,  
>  raving with frantic lips, while the gods forbade her to be believed,  
>  I, pregnant Hecuba, saw first; nor did I keep my fear silent  
>  and before Cassandra I was a futile prphet.  
>  It was not the circumspect Ithacan, nor the nocturnal comrade of the Ithacan  
>  who scattered fire among you, nor was it deceitful Sinon:  
>  That is my fire; you are burning with my torches.

(Seneca, _The Trojan Women_ , Act I; Hecuba’s speech after the fall of Troy; own translation)

On the door is a bronze plaque, engraved in even lettering: SERENA CAM BEUL METELLA: AMPHORAE ET VINO. It leads to a spacious atrium, as sunny as this godsforsaken island can ever be. In the atrium there are benches, crowded with clients sitting and standing in their formal tunics, even a few togas. On the walls are the most beautiful murals this side of Cisalpine Gaul: Serena’s pride and joy, commissioned specially from Rome’s most celebrated artist. Two years ago she paid for his travel all the way out to this most remote outpost of the Empire, hosted him for the months and months it took him to paint the murals, inspired by the Lucullan house in Pompeii, all carmine red and cobalt blue. Taking up the entirety of one wall is a portrait of Serena herself, posed like Artemis in the forest, draped in swathes of fabric, limbs strong and wiry. She gazes directly out from the mural, catching and holding the viewer’s attention, dark eyes steely, determined, and there’s the faintest hint of a smirk playing about her lips as she rests one hand on an amphora, her life’s work and the source of all this wealth. In her other hand she offers the viewer a bunch of grapes, and the artist’s message is obvious: here, she says, partake with me.

Here and there in the atrium, her clients are murmuring among themselves. The most important are perched on benches closest to the corridor which runs at a right angle off the atrium towards her office; the others mill about, standing with awkward posture in the middle of all this luxury. Some of the clients stare off towards the pool which takes up the space at the centre of the atrium, and the household shrine, the lararium, beyond: so that nobody might mistake her for a Briton, this house has been deliberately built in the traditional Roman style, and Serena will suppress her prayers to the old Mother Goddess and pray to foreign gods if it will help her customers feel secure.

For these are not secure times: listen! the clients are whispering among themselves. “I hear that the Iceni ready their horses, Gaius,” an old man mutters to his son, sitting next to him in a pristine white toga. He speaks in flawless Latin, but his tongue lingers longingly over the clan name Iceni, betraying his origins.

“Hush!” Gaius mutters sharply, fists flexing around his stylus and wax tablet. “This is not the place, Father.” Another man, Conn the builder, clad in his worn blue tunic, glances over at him with a raised eyebrow. Gaius glares, daring him to speak.

“Do you really have so little faith in our legions?” Conn asks, and Gaius turns fully in his seat, a retort close to his lips.

“Even now,” he continues, before Gaius can speak, “Consul Paulinus is in Gaul. If the Iceni bitch makes anything of her claims of ill-treatment at Roman hands, Paulinus will wipe out her and all her kind within days.”

Gaius pauses, eyeing him up and down. “I understand you were granted the contract to lay the stones for the new fortress, here in Londinium,” he says, each word bitten out behind clenched teeth. “The Legions must be pleased their pet has no need of being commanded to bark.”

Conn flushes, his Briton-pale skin turning a fiery red. “My affairs are my own, Gaius Quintilius!”

“So they are,” Gaius observes. “But not all Londinium shares your regard for the great Paulinus. There have been too many rumours of inaction, of delay. Some say Paulinus should never have been given the command; others that there is corruption in that army, even at the very top. No: I think we cannot rely on Paulinus to save us, should Boudicca come this way.”

As soon as Gaius has finished speaking, the room falls silent, tense as if everyone is holding their breath. His shoulders tense, and he turns around, toga whispering against his bench, already knowing who he’ll see.

Serena.

She’s standing by the pool, arms crossed, dark, curly hair bound up in a simplified version of the latest fashion, dress falling in graceful folds to the floor. She looks furious, and Gaius gulps, his tongue clicking dry against the roof of his mouth.

“Gaius Quintilius and Marius Quintilius,” she says, voice low and controlled, and Gaius nearly trips over his toga in his haste to get to his feet.

They follow her down the long corridor to her office. The corridor has been recently whitewashed, and the walls shine in the rays of midmorning sun which fall through the large windows in her office. Once inside, she closes the door behind them, the sun catching the emerald signet ring she wears on her right hand, the stone chiseled into the shape of a leopard. It’s her legal seal, the one with which she signs all contracts, and a more stylised version of the same motif appears on the amphorae she sells: this is the real deal, it says, you can trust this.

She is the first to sit, settling herself behind her desk, back poker-straight. She has modelled herself on women such as Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi brothers, that paragon of Roman virtue who gave up not only her husband but also her sons, for the glory of the Roman state. From head to toe she is the picture of the perfect Roman lady - but her eyes are a shade too sharp, a touch too direct, and she cannot conceal the quickness of her mind or its cunning. Gaius squirms in his seat, reduced to the awkwardness of an eight year old as her eyes sweep over him. Finally, she holds out her hand.

“Tablet,” she says, and he hands it over immediately. She runs her eyes over the columns of figures detailing this month’s wine sales and expenditure, and adds the total in her head. “Good,” she says briefly, handing it back to him, and he permits himself a relieved smile.

“I apologise for the unpleasantness earlier,” Gaius says, a little uncertainly.

Serena shakes her head. “Unfortunately, Gaius Quintilius, I believe you were right.”

“Madam?” he asks in surprise.

“I too have heard the rumours,” she says, glancing over his head to make sure the door remains closed. She turns to Marius, who has been watching her from the chair where he sits, hunched and arthritic. “You and I knew the old ways, once, and I know Boudicca will not be easily halted.”

“But -” Gaius begins to argue, and she cuts him off.

“The Romans believe the Britons have forgotten the old ways,” she says. “It is foolish to think so. Boudicca will not stop until she is stopped by force, and we can only pray that Paulinus will be sufficient.”

Marius nods. “Londinium burned once already in my lifetime,” he says, voice deep like Hades himself, and despite herself, Serena shivers. “Who is to say it will not burn again?”

The words seem to hang in the early summer air between them, potent and final as if the augers in Rome had already read the sacred entrails and declared it so: this is a summer for burning. On the wall by the door Serena can see the shadows cast by the flowering ash tree that stands outside her window, the shadows dancing and jumping in the breeze, and the image fixes itself in her mind like a talisman.

It takes an enormous effort of will for Serena to break the silence that feels thick and heavy with the sudden weight of fear. “Make sure we have ordered enough provisions, Gaius Quintilius. Enough supplies for the business, enough supplies for the house. We will need it.”

Gaius nods, looking much younger than his twenty-five years, and she feels an upsurge of pity for him.

When Gaius and Marius leave, Serena turns to gaze out the window. The tall ash tree that stands outside her window sways in the late summer breeze, and she stares through its dancing leaves towards the street paved in Roman cobblestones. A troop of legionnaires tromps past, packs heavy, centurion straight-backed at the head of the column, and Serena’s breath catches for a second, instinctive, uncontrollable. She knows the Romans are here in Britain permanently, and her livelihood relies on their love of her wine, but the last vestiges of her British heritage rebel inside her, hot like flames. She clenches her fist, unseen by her side, and turns away.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Serena meets someone new, and makes a choice.

The next day dawns grey, merely a few streaks of blue left in the stormy sky. The clientes arrive wrapped in thick woollen cloaks, fragile protection against the British elements. They bring gossip from all over Londinium and beyond, snatched whispers of fear and dread, and they whisper these rumours to each other while they wait in Serena’s atrium, burrowed into their cloaks. 

Serena waits to talk with them, far beyond the time she would normally begin. Instead, she remains inside her office, standing behind her desk, gazing out of the expertly-glazed window into the street beyond. The street is nearly empty, misty with fine, uncertain rain, turning the cobbles slick and treacherous with mud. It feels like any other British summer, and Serena thinks maybe she was spooked by Gaius’ words yesterday, frightened by his talk of inevitabilities. She begins to turn away from the window, nearly composed enough to summon the clientes in for her customary talks - but at the edge of her vision there is a flicker of movement, and she snaps her eyes back to the window. 

Someone is making their way down the street. 

In the rising wind their cloak billows behind them, a sweep of bright blue over which Serena’s eyes linger. The cloak’s hood is up, wrapped tightly around their face, although they’ve neglected to wrap it around their body, whoever it is who’s foolhardy enough to be out when the fine rain looks likely to turn stormy, so all Serena can see is a pair of Briton-style woollen trousers and sturdy sandals. Serena finds herself gazing at the lonely figure for long seconds as they walk down the road and stop outside the little alleyway that leads, through a series of sidestreets, to the forum. They pause, hood still over their head, but their careful scanning of the street leads them to look directly at Serena for a moment, dark eyes locking with Serena’s own. Despite herself, Serena gasps, gripping the windowsill a little tighter. It’s a woman, with pale skin and the bright blonde hair which marks her instantly as a native of this windy isle. She scans the road carefully, without haste, and meets Serena’s eyes again for less than a fraction of a second before she turns, cloak whipping behind her, and walks casually down the alleyway towards the forum. 

Serena stares after her for a few long seconds, as her cloak billows behind her and then disappears into the faint mist descending on Londinium. Eventually, Serena’s eyes fall, moving to her own hands which are gripping the windowsill with unnecessary force. She flexes her fingers, letting her hands drop to her side as she takes a long breath in, then out. 

She frowns, wondering she reacted so strongly and unable to find a satisfactory explanation, however much she tries. Eventually she shakes her head, her intricately-braided hairdo wobbling slightly, and she reaches towards her desk and snags a few more hairpins, topped with faceted agate. She shoves them into her updo, her eyes dragging reluctantly back to the alleyway down which the woman vanished. There’s a flash of a moment when her imagination superimposes onto the empty street her memory of the woman in her slim woollen trousers and the easy, loping way in which she walked, and she draws in a hasty breath.

The door opens with a discreet brushing sound, and Serena whirls around, colour rising to her face as if she’s been surprised in the middle of something indecent.

“Ma’am? The clientes are waiting…” her slave girl Iris trails off, unsure. It’s the first time Serena has ever ignored her visitors for this long, and Serena realises how unusual this must seem. She smiles at Iris as she passes her, a little absentminded quirk of the lips, and Iris falls in behind her as they make their way to the atrium. 

“Friends,” she says in the atrium, and then she pauses. The clientes have fallen silent, and they’re looking at her, gazes ranging from mild concern from Quintus the gardener to real worry on the face of Esup, the old woodworker who had been freed by her father but whose loyalty remained, as always, with her. 

She dismisses the words lined up in orderly phrases in her mind, trusts herself to speak faithfully to her own concerns. 

“These are bad times,” she finally says, hands folded in front of her. She casts a glance over the assembled visitors, who are gazing at her in frank astonishment. “We know nothing of the future, or of Boudicca’s plans. It is inevitable that she will try to make an attack on Londinium; all that remains unknown is when she might do so. We may all have to leave the city in haste, leaving behind our goods, our possessions, our most treasured items. There is no point in remaining; Paulinus may still arrive at any moment, and a citizen militia will not stop Boudicca.”

She lets her eyes trail over the clientes; most of them are looking at her in shock. 

“Go,” she says quietly. “Go, to prepare yourselves with all possible haste.”

Despite her words, the clientes leave the atrium slowly, unwilling to give up its familiarity and all it represents. She stands in front of the household altar until the last man has left, casting a silent glance behind him as he closes the door to the street, and then she turns around, sinking to her knees in front of the altar.

It’s a little altar to Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, war, art and commerce. A neat pile of candles lie in a small groove to one side of the altar, along with a pile of sulphuric firelighters. Serena reaches for a candle and lights it, letting it melt a little until she can pour some of the wax in the candleholder to fix it firmly in place. She gazes for a long moment at the little bas relief of Minerva above the altar, gazes directly into her sharp, clever eyes and firm-set lips, and bows her head in prayer.

But to her surprise the words she mutters aren’t to Minerva at all. Her lips form the words independently of her mind: “O Brigantia, who protected my people in their time of most dire need, protect us now, save us from those who would seek to destroy all we have created, all we hold dear. As you saved my grandfather’s life when the Roman conquerers came, save us now from one of our own.” Her eyes fly open and she stares at the marble floor in front of her: it’s the first time she’s prayed to her tribal goddess in over three decades. It’s the first time she’s acknowledged her British heritage in nearly as long. 

She stumbles to her feet, rising awkwardly and nearly tripping over the long edge of her dress. There’s an old shawl draped discreetly on a post behind a large chair, and she wraps it around her hastily before she makes for the door. She opens the door and glances back, prompted by some undefined dread, low in the pit of her stomach: wind rushes into the atrium and the candle on the altar flickers once, twice, and gutters out. A thin trail of black smoke rises in erratically-widening circles from the candle as the wind whips her shawl back in her face and she loses her grip on the door. It slams shut, loud above the sound of the wind, and then she’s locked out.

She stares at the door for a few long seconds as the wind plucks at her hair, whipping long strands against her face. She pushes them back as she turns around, stepping off the street kerb to cross the road. The wind is strong enough that she has to hunch her shoulders and squint to keep walking; but soon enough she reaches the alleyway which leads to the forum. It’s bounded by the high brick outer walls of the houses on both sides; normally she’d never walk down here by herself, because a Roman lady should not skulk, should not travel unaccompanied, should not conduct business in the forum on her own behalf… She hesitates a moment, social rules marching through her mind like a chant, and she nearly turns back - starts to turn her head back towards the door of her villa, in fact - but in her mind’s eye she sees the black smoke rising towards heaven from the guttering candle, as if Brigantia herself heard her prayer, and she plunges headlong into the alleyway.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The moment you've all been waiting for - Serena meets Berenice.

The forum is nearly empty when Serena emerges from the alleyway; the wind, always a harbinger of a coming storm, must have driven people home. On one end of the forum, the large basilica - the law courts - stands deserted, everyone either huddling inside out of the weather or gone home, to prosecute their cases another day. On the forum’s opposite end stands the Temple of Jupiter, built solid for the ages in stone and marble. Above the main entrance a statue of Jupiter rears, the broad figure resplendent with toga and beard, lightning bolts held aloft. For a culture insistent that Britain is not a conquered country, that the old tribal chieftains willingly gave up their sovereignty in return for trade, baths, and a postal service, the Romans wasted no time in stamping their mark on Britain. 

Gavrus Sageatus, the banker, waves from his kiosk in the middle of the forum, and Serena - always keen to cultivate business, no matter the weather - walks over. A slim man with sandy blonde hair and beard who managed her father’s accounts before she took over, he’s stacking accounting tablets on a shelf out of the rain. He’s always supported her, even when her own family frowned on the idea of their daughter taking over the family business, and in return she’s always done her banking with him. 

“Windy, isn’t it?” she asks, with the joking lilt he’s come to expect after so many years of friendship and business. 

“Bad times,” he says, shaking his head as he neatens the stacks of tablets. 

She raises one eyebrow. 

“These are bad times,” he says again, as if she didn’t hear, and her breath catches in the back of her throat.

She hums, less a word capable of meaning than a noise of vague distress. “Boudicca?”

“Paulinus,” he says, and his expression is suddenly thunderous as he glares in her direction. 

“The General?” she asks in surprise. “I heard he was in the south, pursuing the druids at the sanctuary of Mona.”

“Yes, and us in such need,” Gavrus says bitterly. “That man would let the world burn if he thought it would give him an advantage.”

Serena nods. She supplies all the wine for the fort here in Londinium, and - as it does in military settlements all around the Empire - word travels. Paulinus is no friend to his soldiers, according to legionnaires’ gossip: a hard taskmaster, uncaring of his soldiers’ needs, and - some whisper - corrupt. 

There's a flash of blue at the edge of Serena’s vision, and her eye is drawn to it as naturally as breath. She’s moving away before she thinks, abandoning Gavrus at the kiosk. He calls after her, and she turns her head in apology, but when she looks forward again the blue is gone. She picks up speed, running recklessly through the forum as the mist finally descends, covering the stone buildings with a grey patina. 

Visibility is low: Serena can only see a few feet in front of her, but she continues running, trusting in her knowledge of the forum’s layout not to trip over one of the layers of steps that border each side of the central depressed rectangle. All she can hear is the sound of her own footsteps, and it feels as though she’s entirely alone, running through a forgotten, abandoned landscape. 

Out of the mist, a set of four massive pillars loom. Behind them: a doorway, ajar. Serena realises she’s run all the way from Gavrus’ kiosk on the southern side of the forum to the Temple of Jupiter, on the extreme northern side. She pants for breath, loud in the oppressive quiet of the mist, and walks up the steps to the doorway.

Serena has never stepped foot inside the Temple of Jupiter before: all the major rites are conducted outside the temple, in the full glare of public scrutiny in the forum. How can you trust that the omens are correct unless the augurs conduct their blood-drenched rituals in public? Inside, the temple is a large, echoing, empty space, with small, high windows that cast squares of grey light upon the marble floor. Towards the back the altar stands in empty, isolated grandeur; behind it there is a double-life-size statue of Jupiter which echoes that placed on the roof of the temple. The statue’s lightning bolts are foiled in silver, and the weak light that trickles through the windows catches on the bolts’ tips, making them sparkle. It’s nearly enough to send Serena to her knees in prayer from reflex alone - but she notices another, smaller door beside the giant right foot of Jupiter and heads for it on instinct, averting her eyes from the statue out of some half-felt fear that the god might notice her. She pushes the door open, wincing at the sharp creak it makes as it grinds against the marble floor. Behind the door is a corridor, narrow and low-ceilinged, and at the end of the corridor is another door, halfway open, and silhouetted in the mist-filled gap between door and jamb is the shape of a woman. 

The woman’s cloak is wrapped closely around her, familiar like a lover’s hands, and her hood is up so Serena cannot catch a glimpse of her face. But messy blonde hair escapes from the side of the hood and when Serena’s eyes trail down the woman’s body she notices worn leather sandals. Serena feels frozen in place, one hand on the side of the door, toe nearly, but not quite, over the threshold of the corridor, and it seems that the other woman feels likewise, standing rigid and frozen at the end of the corridor, face turned half away as if she’s afraid to move. The temple remains shrouded in silence. Neither woman moves. 

The woman’s shoulder twitches, in a quick jerk of terrified breath, and Serena says, “Hey!” and the woman whirls away from the corridor into the garden beyond, and Serena’s feet are loud on the stone floor and she’s still breathless and she rips the door open and pounds after the woman and - 

There she is. Standing in the garden, shoulders heaving, face averted. But the hood has slipped slightly, and Serena catches another glimpse of that bright golden hair. It feels like something stolen, something precious, but she wrenches her mind away from that perception before it can coalesce entirely. 

She approaches, the most cautious she’s ever been.

“Serena,” she says carefully, as she begins to draw nearer to the woman. “My name is Serena.” 

The woman steals a glance in her direction. Dark eyes, thin expressive lips. Serena’s breath catches. 

“I have seen you before in this town,” the woman says, in slightly stilted Latin. “Serena Cam Beul, the wine merchant, whose wine centurions drink. This is not a place where you belong.” She begins to draw the hood back over herself, obscuring that beautiful golden hair. “Go; I have wasted too much time already.” 

Serena shoots out a hand, acting on pure instinct. It lands on the woman’s upper arm, grasping her the way soldiers grasp each other, in the brotherhood of war. Abruptly the woman whirls back, breaking Serena’s grip on her arm and backing her into the shrubbery, one hand on her shoulder, one on her midriff. They stand frozen, eyes locked on each other, as the place by her waist where the other woman’s hands touch Serena grows warm. With slow movements, so as not to alarm her, Serena’s hands float to occupy the space between them, and then they land on the other woman’s shoulders. Serena feels hard, ropy muscle across her shoulders and back, and the dark eyes opposite her flicker shut for the briefest of moments. 

“What’s your name?” Serena murmurs, as quietly as she can. 

The other woman’s eyes shiver open, and the words sound as if they are dragged out of her. “Berenice.” There’s a long pause, and then her lips twist bitterly. “I know no other.” 

“Why are you here?” 

“She is coming.” 

“Who?” Serena asks.

Berenice leans towards her, the movement of her lithe body graceful like the living personification of a silhouette on an Athenian black-figure vase, one sandal-clad foot between Serena’s. 

“Boudicca,” she whispers, eventually, into Serena’s ear, and Serena shivers as Berenice’s fingers curl greedily around her waist. It's all she can focus on, more than she’s felt in years, those long fingers warm and strong at her waist, and the name Berenice spoke is lost in the mist as Serena tries to regulate her breathing.

When cognition returns to Serena it’s like a club over the head on a dark night in an alleyway, and she shoves Berenice away with both hands, feeling a wave of nausea rise up within her. Berenice stumbles back, and her dark eyes flash momentarily with something like shock. 

“Boudicca?” Serena hisses, and she throws her weight forward so she’s no longer hidden among the bushes. “You thought I would betray my people for a woman who has no true claim to power? After everything I’ve done, after the years I’ve spent at the service of Rome - ” 

Berenice’s eyes narrow, and she crowds against Serena, toe-to-toe, on the edge of the shrubbery. Serena can feel the anger radiating off her, hands clenching at her side, and something inside her welcomes Berenice’s rage.

“You are a Cam Beul,” Berenice says, eventually, voice tight. “You owe the Roman invaders nothing.”

It’s such an unexpected statement that it startles a laugh from Serena, sharp and entirely without humour. “You really think that,” she says, her lip twisting in contempt. “You really think it’s that easy. And where have you been, all this time, with your Greek name and your blonde hair - ”

She trails off, understanding dawning as Berenice’s expression becomes grim.

“I bought my freedom,” Berenice grits out between clenched teeth. “I bowed to the Roman sword for as long as I was compelled, but no longer. It’s more than I could say of you - you capitulated, you made money off the invaders, learned their ways, their sly, lying tongue.”

“I should have you arrested as a runaway slave,” Serena spits in return, and she means it, in the moment she says it, but Berenice freezes, and she regrets her words instantly. 

“You would not,” Berenice mutters, but it’s hesitant, afraid, and Serena’s anger dissolves and she grasps Berenice’s arm, feeling the sinews jump underneath her skin, warm and alive.

A door creaks open, somewhere deep within the temple. Serena turns immediately, craning to hear the noise more clearly, but Berenice remains stock-still, gaze frozen on Serena’s hand.

“I have to - ” Berenice shuts her mouth with an audible snap as they both hear the door creak closed.

“Go,” Serena whispers urgently, using her hand, still wrapped around Berenice’s arm, to push her backwards. Berenice stumbles, grabbing at Serena’s hip for balance, and when her eyes meet Serena’s they’re wide and dark with fear. She backs away, and Serena moves with her because in her panic, Berenice seems to have forgotten she’s still grasping Serena’s hip. 

“What will you say?” Berenice whispers. 

Serena shakes her head.

“Please!” Berenice mutters, a little louder, and Serena’s stomach plummets through the ground as she realises there are tears in Berenice’s eyes.

“I won’t,” she whispers, eyes scanning Berenice’s face, and she smiles, calm and reassuring.

Berenice blinks, and raises her hand to trail her fingers gently across Serena’s cheek, and then - 

then she’s gone, whirling away in a taut flurry of movement, blonde hair obscured once more by the dark woollen hood, and Serena is alone in the garden when the priest of the Temple of Jupiter pushes open the door she left ajar. 

“Madam!” he says, horrified by her female presence in this most male of precincts. “Please, use the path by the side of the temple.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting and running tonight, I'm afraid! I do want to say though, thank you all so much for your lovely comments <3 I will reply to each of them soon!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Serena has a surprisingly illuminating conversation with her cook. Paulinus, the Hope of Londinium (sort of) comes to town.

A WEEK LATER

Serena spends the rest of the week on tenterhooks. She stumbles over her words when she speaks to the clientes, she nearly drops a full amphora of excellent Falernian wine while she’s talking with Centurion Rufus Lucunianus at the fort, and at the slightest sound of movement in the street her gaze snaps to the window, seeking a glimpse of bright blonde hair.

Of course, she’d never confess the reason she’s so jumpy. By the end of the week, she’s perfected her glare, turning it liberally on anyone who so much as glances at her wrong, and she’s convinced that the clientes are whispering about her poor mood while they sit and wait in her atrium. It’s fine; she’s fine, she tells herself, and she takes another, medicinal, draught of her own Falernian.

Late at night, however, is a different story. She never wanders outside, because word from Centurion Rufus is that the streets are no longer safe, even here near the centre of town, in a settled, stable district, but she spends hours at her window, gazing beyond the branches of the ash tree towards the alleyway which leads towards the forum. During those dark, silent hours, time stretched thin, she feels as if any wrong move will trip a catapult and send events crashing back into focus. But it’s peaceful in her office with the door closed and only a candle to light her reading, and - despite her insomnia - she begins to treasure the hours spent there, her head resting against the cool glass of her window, eyelids drifting shut as she remembers the rough, calloused feeling of Berenice’s fingers against her cheek. It’s only at night that she can allow herself to dream, even when she’s not quite sure what she’s dreaming of. Her dreams are mostly formless, filled with echoes of words left mostly unsaid and flashes of colour that she half-remembers when she wakes up. Berenice wanders in and out of her dreams seemingly at will; sometimes Serena remembers nothing more than the glint in her eyes as she stood boxing Serena in beside the shrubbery; and sometimes she remembers Berenice’s words as clearly as if she were hearing them for the first time.

“You are a Cam Beul,” she had said. “You owe the Roman invaders nothing.”

Serena spends hours thinking about that statement, alone in the office at night. She thinks about her father, brought up by a man who had known the old ways of the Britons, before the Romans had arrived. She thinks about her grandfather, her mother’s father, who had traded with the Romans in Gaul, long before they had arrived on these windy shores, who had welcomed the Romans with open arms and who had been murdered by two men of his own tribe who had been unable to forgive his contact with the invaders. She thinks about her mother, who never forgave those two men, her own cousins; who refused to teach her young daughter anything of her mother tongue; who insisted on Latin only, Roman dress, Roman ways. Eventually, she remembers the look in Berenice’s eyes when she uttered those words; how sad she had looked, how full of grief and anger she had been, and late at night, in the safety of her office, Serena weeps silently, conscious for the first time of how much her people lost when the Romans arrived.

And yet every morning is the same. She wakes up, cheek pressed against the cool glass of her window, yawns widely as she levers herself out of her sitting position, and thinks fleetingly, Oh well. I’ll probably never see her again.

And so the week progresses. Sunday dawns, a burning hot morning, and as Serena blinks the sleep from her eyes she considers how very appropriate the Roman name for this day is - dies solis, the day of the sun. She goes about her day, taking care with her dress, looking over her accounts for the past week as Iris, her slave girl, brushes out her hair, twisting it in the complicated Roman way.

She spends the morning reading, a new scroll of Cicero which she had obtained some weeks earlier from the bookseller in the forum. HIs sentences are long and complex; they keep her occupied, keep her from dwelling over-long on Boudicca and the oncoming storm. At midday she stretches, lithe as one of the panthers they say the Emperor Nero favours for his circuses, and pads into the kitchen.

“Miss Serena!” her cook exclaims, horrified at Serena’s intrusion, and she swallows a laugh.

“It’s alright, Enica,” she says, gazing with fondness at the floury streak across Enica’s cheek, the reddish-blonde hair that’s beginning to frizz in the heat of the day. She snatches up an apple, lying on the bench. “I was just coming in for a snack.”

Enica frowns, but Serena can see the twitch in the corner of her mouth as she tries not to laugh. “You’ll never change,” she says eventually.

Serena grins. “Have you heard any news of Boudicca’s advance?” she asks around the apple in her mouth.

Enica shakes her head as she turns back to her cooking. “I bought some more sprouts earlier, but there was no news in the market.” Her hands pause over the pot as she stares into space for a moment, and then her mouth twists oddly. “Doesn’t mean she won’t be on our doorsteps by nightfall.”

“There’s no way to tell,” Serena mumbles around her apple.

Silence falls for a few moments, as Enica stirs her stew and Serena chews her apple, slouching against the kitchen table. The sunlight slants into the kitchen from the large, open windows in the east wall, and from outside filters the blurred sounds of city life.

“What do you think of her?” Serena bursts out.

A startled glance from Enica, and Serena clarifies. “Seriously. What do you think of Boudicca?”

Enica shakes her head. “No, Miss Serena.”

“Why?”

A lock of hair falls across Enica’s face as she bows her head, neither blonde nor red but peculiarly both and utterly Celtic. Her hands still on the pot handles.

Serena steps closer. “You virtually raised me, Enica,” she says, laying one hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “You have no need of fear.”

Enica lets out a breath. Head still bowed, under her breath she says, “I knew this day would come.”

Serena takes a sudden step back, and Enica glances abruptly up, faded blue eyes sharp as the edge on a Roman pilum.

“Did you not realise?” she asks, gripping the edge of the bench with whitened knuckles. “Did you never understand that one day the old Britain would come rising up out of the east, and your Romans would never be able to control this island for good?”

Serena shakes her head, backing away until she feels the solid edge of the kitchen table at her back.

“We all knew this would happen some day,” Enica continues, vehemently. “That it is Boudicca, today, and not some other chief years from now is merely a fluke of fate. And the Romans will never truly subdue us, with their legions and their commerce and their aqueducts.”

They stare at each other, Serena’s mouth open in shock as Enica bites off the end of her final words.

“Too far,” Serena warns, under her breath, but Enica holds her gaze steadily.

“The Romans trust me,” Serena says eventually. “I cannot permit this type of talk.”

“Is this what you mean when you say I have no reason for fear,” Enica replies, and yes, maybe Serena is a little afraid now, as Enica gazes at her directly, seeming hardly like a slave at all, not anymore, a calm expression on her face -

“I have made compromises you cannot fathom!” Serena spits, angry and embarrassed at her anger.

Enica reaches out, hands wrinkled but still strong, and grasps Serena by the shoulders. “I know,” she says, more gently than Serena might have anticipated.

Outside, someone scuffles hurried feet against the tiled path in the back garden. Still angry, still surprised by the solid pressure of Enica’s hands on her shoulders, Serena barely notices the sound.

“Ma’am!” Iris comes flying into the kitchen, a large cloth bag on her arm weighed down with vegetables.

Serena jolts around to face her, knocking herself out of Enica’s hold.

“The forum,” Iris says, and dumps the bag on the kitchen table to catch her breath. A single onion rolls out. “Paulinus-”

Serena skids on the tiles as she rounds the corner to the atrium at a run. She barely pauses to grab her wrap, and then she’s outside, the door slamming shut behind her, fleeing at a dead sprint down the alleyway to the forum.

The air hangs hot and still, pressing in on Serena from all sides as her feet pound past shuttered doors and windows, the high walls of the villas revealing nothing except a scrap of graffitied Sappho. She runs on, and as she nears the end of the alleyway she begins to hear a noise, a low murmur at first, that grows steadily into a roar the closer she gets. She bursts into the forum, panting, trying to calm herself - and there he is: General Gaius Suetonius Paulinus.

She can hear clearly now: the roar is a multitude of voices, rage and grief and despair all merging into one long ululation. Paulinus is on his horse, a gigantic beast, by repute fearless in battle, but this crowd is an unknown entity and it’s clearly nervous, moving from side to side with tiny, anxious steps. Paulinus is trying to calm it down, patting its neck with sharp, absent-minded movements as he keeps his eyes on the great swarm of people. Like a live thing, the crowd surges towards him, and Serena’s been here only a few minutes but her instincts scream that this crowd is on the verge of violence.

An abrupt movement: Paulinus stands up in his saddle, reins grasped in one meaty hand, and roars, “Silence!”

The crowd is subdued. They back off: sullenly; but they move away a mere handful of paces, and there’s an atmosphere as of a disobedient dog settling back on its haunches, waiting to see what its owner will do.

Serena makes sure she has the alleyway at her back, ready to run if the crowd decides it’s had enough of Paulinus and his explanations.

Paulinus sits back in his saddle. “I had hoped to bring you better news than I have for you today,” he says, and Serena notices a lock of grey hair, escaping from under his helmet, and the deep lines that cross his face.

The crowd mutters. Across the forum Serena sees Gavrus Sageatus, the banker. He catches her eye and his face collapses in sorrow and a kind of strange resignation.

“What have you to say of Boudicca?” one brave soul shouts at Paulinus.

“What is there to say?” Paulinus replies, glancing briefly down at his hands. “I can do no more for you. You must flee, or defend yourselves; the Legions cannot.”

The crowd is horribly silent, as if time itself has stopped. Serena feels a great rushing in her ears, and she wonders, stupidly, hopelessly, whether she heard Paulinus correctly. She stares hard at the man, committing his features to memory in case she sees him again, in some future hell: his aquiline nose, his hard-worn hands, his grim mouth and harsh brown eyes. And then, finally, the crowd shifts and murmurs and breaks free of his pall of authority. A woman screams, “What of us!” and her cry of rage is taken up by her neighbour, and then by a few others, and finally by the whole crowd, shouting as one: What of us? What of Londinium?

The big horse rears, frightened and nervy, and those in the near vicinity pull backwards, avoiding its flailing hooves. Paulinus pulls back, viciously reining the horse in. His voice cracking, he shouts at the woman who screamed, “Do you think this is easy? To abandon - ”

He breaks off, and Serena can see his jaw work as he swallows abruptly.

“I can do no more,” he says, his voice low and carrying. “Flee, if you can; defend yourselves, if you cannot. The Legions make their stand elsewhere.”

He pushes his way out of the crowd, the great horse now picking carefully among the people. On the steps of the basilica, on the opposite side of the forum, Serena spots Centurion Rufus Lucunianus, looking punchdrunk and empty, as if all the stuffing has been taken from him. He reaches for his sword in a habitual, aborted movement, only to lower his hand, overtaken by the realisation that there is little point left.

Despite their anger mere moments before, the crowd is largely silent. Serena reaches a hand out, eager to feel the reassuring concrete wall of the house forming one side of the alleyway behind her. It is warmed by the day’s sun and she splays her fingers out, feeling the little pockmarks of the concrete. Nobody else moves, mired in a quicksand of slow, gaping horror. Serena feels like she’s caught in the moment before sleep, when she feels like she’s falling and her body wakes her up with an abrupt jerk. Except she’s continuing to fall, in frantic, uncommunicative free-fall, and she’s not waking up because this is real, she’s awake now, this is real and Boudicca is coming -

She turns away, back into the alleyway, and, trying very hard not to focus on the sick, swaying feeling in her stomach, she walks back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My description of Paulinus in the forum owes a considerable amount to the spectacular writing of Rosemary Sutcliff in The Capricorn Bracelet. If you haven’t read her work, I highly recommend it. I was low-key convinced that I had taken “The Legions make their stand elsewhere” from her, but I can’t find the quote in her book so it may actually be my own brain that thought that one up. Nevertheless – I can’t quote from it all that I want to here, but let me quote this:  
> “I saw how he [Suetonius Paulinus] was holding the whole crowd with his eyes, that tall, dusty man. ‘Abandon your goods and gear; scatter as far and as fast as you can. Seek what shelter the forest can give you. I can give you none.’ And then, above the dreadful voice of the crowd, he cried out like a man in great pain and in a kind of fury: ‘Do you think this is easy for me? A decision lightly taken? No more! In the name of all the Gods, no more!’” That’s heady stuff, y’all.
> 
> Also: I goofed on the posting timeline, I’m sorry! Meant to post earlier this week, but work has been super busy (construction litigation disputes wait for no virus, ig) and days of the week are a social construct haha. Anyway, enjoy!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sack of Londinium. Serena makes a decision.

Serena fell asleep that night with the sick feeling of fear in her stomach, but when she wakes up the next morning, she has a plan, formed in its entirety in her mind while she was asleep. 

She wakes up unusually early, before sunrise. Roman hours divide the day in twelve equal increments, measured from sunrise until sunset. While she normally wakes up after the first hour and her clientes usually arrive by the third hour, today she is dressed, alert and organising her staff by the beginning of the first hour. 

The sunrise creeps in through the compluvium, the square hole in the roof above the indoor pool in the atrium. Serena’s staff are gathering, neat in their white tunics, a leopard embroidered on the sleeves in green silk thread. She waits until they all arrive, her personal staff, the domestic help and her business staff and even Janus, the new kid whose sole job is to guard the front door. His nose is permanently running and currently exacerbated by fear, and she hands him a handkerchief as he shuffles in. Still, he falls into line easily enough when the gardener grabs him by the elbow, pulling him back into the crowd while he noisily blows his nose. 

Serena clears her throat. Fifteen or more scared faces look back at her, illuminated in the pale morning light filtering down from the compluvium.

“I’ve made a decision,” she says.

By midday everything is in order. The business staff departed half an hour previously, one cart laden with scrolls of accounts, the other with twenty amphorae of the best vintage. Both carts have been despatched to the warehouse just outside the city, with orders to begin evacuating the wine stock (definitely) and the heavy machinery (if possible). The domestic staff are travelling in three carts, two piled high with furniture and Serena’s own scroll collection. The third cart lingers; both Enica and Iris have a seat on this cart. Their destination is Serena’s summer-villa outside the city, two days’ travel but far enough away, and discreet enough, that hopefully Boudicca won’t come calling. 

Usually so composed, Iris frets as she places her bag inside the cart. 

“I want to stay to help you, ma’am,” she says plaintively as she turns towards Serena, standing by the main entrance. 

“But you are more help at the villa,” Serena says quietly. 

Iris glances down at her feet, arms wrapped around her thin ribs. Serena lifts her chin up with one finger, smiling encouragingly at Iris’ watering eyes. 

“I need your organisational skills at the villa,” she says. “Cleaning up once Boudicca is defeated will be a job for us all, and I will need your help then.”

Iris sniffs again, and throws her arms around Serena impulsively, giving her a quick, fierce hug before she dashes off to the cart, wiping her eyes with shivering hands. 

Serena glances after her, shifting her weight from one sandal-clad foot to another. 

“We’ll be alright,” Enica says, in a low tone.

Serena turns around. Beside her, Enica has a small bag slung over her shoulder, all her worldly possessions tied up together, and there’s a grim look on her face. 

“Am I doing the right thing?” she asks, feeling helpless for the first time in this whole process. 

Enica nods. “You must survive.”

“I just…” she gesticulates, sighs, trails off. 

Once again, Enica grasps her by the shoulder, and, unwillingly, she glances up to meet her eyes. 

“You can replace things,” Enica says quietly. “All this can be rebuilt. But not your life; not you.”

Serena closes her eyes for a single long moment and nods, slowly. By the time she opens them again Enica’s hands have slipped from her shoulders and she’s turned away, walking - limping, really - to the cart. 

Impulsively, Serena calls out, slipping the signet ring from her finger and dashing to the cart.   
“Take this,” she says to Enica, dropping the ring with its emerald leopard onto her hand. “It’s not safe here.”

She hurries away from Enica’s look of surprise, back to the door, and in a few seconds the cart has drawn away from the villa and Serena is left alone. It’s abruptly quiet, and the only noises around are faint calls from streets further away from the forum as other families pack up and prepare to flee. She glances towards the alley that leads to the forum, remembering with a flash of clarity the bright blue colour of Berenice’s cloak, and finally turns away to slip back to the safety of the villa.

That night, Serena sleeps huddled on the bench under the window in her study. The boughs of the ash tree outside the window hit against the glass in the wind, and she wakes several times, juddering into tense wakefulness as the wind outside grows stronger.

In the morning, she arises and dresses herself, modestly and soberly, in a nondescript tunic and shawl. She pins her hair away from her face and laces her sandals, and then she picks up an apple from the kitchen and a long, sharp knife from the garden shed and settles down to wait, beside the lararium in the atrium.

For now, Londinium is silent, devoid of the usual shouts of men heading off to work and the cries of children. It’s already a ghost town, and Serena sets aside her apple core and glances around. Behind her, on the wall, is painted her mural, of herself standing resplendent like Artemis, with amphorae beside her and grapes spilling from her outstretched hand in a vulgar abundance of plenty. Silently, she acknowledges that it’s already a relic of a world that no longer exists, and she turns away, bowing her head and slipping into a trance-like state beside the lararium’s flickering candle-fire.

Hours later, she starts awake from an uneasy daze. Filled with distorted visions of Berenice at Boudicca’s right hand, Berenice the avenger, filled with anger and hatred she wreaks on Serena, her daydreams leave her tense and shaky. She sits bolt upright, glances around in a moment of panic - the lararium is still alight, the door is still pulled shut - and tries to regulate her breathing, until she hears the sounds that dragged her out of her daydreams: screams, in the distance, and steel striking steel.

Within seconds she snatches up the knife laid beside her, and sprints down the corridor to her office, which looks out onto the road. The road is empty as she peers through the boughs of the ash tree, but the screams and shouts are closer now, and she whirls away from the window, sucks in a huge, gulping breath, fingers tight around the handle of the knife, gazing blindly around her office, her desk piled high with tablets she’ll never get to read.

Through her panic she hears hoofbeats along the road, and she turns back to the window in a rush. The road is empty, empty - and then Gavrus Sageatus rides past in a whirl of cloak, whipped up by the wind. Both rider and horse look visibly winded, staggering along the road, yet Gavrus urges the horse on, faster and faster, one arm held stiff by his side as a streak of brilliant red mars the brown of his cloak. 

Horse and rider are out of sight before Serena can cry out, and when she realises she’s about to shout she claps a hand over her mouth and twists back to the safety of the wall, away from the window. Tears, hot and angry, spring unbidden to her eyes and she takes a deep, shuddering breath, trying to control her panic. 

Before she can calm herself, though, a great shout goes up from the street. “Fire!”

She freezes, eyes wide, one hand over her mouth, other hand clutching the knife.

And then a great wailing starts up, the sound eerie and primal, like nothing she’s heard before, and interspersed among the cries are repeated shouts, “Fire! Fire! Fire!”

At the final call Serena’s nerve breaks, and she flees out of the office, down the hallway and into the atrium, where she rips open the front door and runs into the street. Behind her, the candle by the lararium gutters out, and in the wind the front door again slams shut, a sealed shrine to a Roman future that is no more.

She turns left, and flees toward the alleyway that leads to the forum, her sturdy sandals striking the cobblestones with every step. As she approaches the forum the sound of fighting grows louder, shouts echoing off the concrete walls of the houses that line the alleyway. The noise blurs together into a great wall of sound, and when she emerges from the alleyway to stand by the side of the forum it’s like being struck on the head with a hammer. 

The forum is a battlefield. 

There’s no other way to say it: where a week previously there stood temples and shops, the banker’s kiosk and the pastry-maker’s stall, there is now bald marble awash with blood, men splayed out dead and dying in front of the temple of Jupiter like an Etruscan sacrifice. Above them, around them, the fight rages: men and women in Iceni garb hacking at the Roman defenders with knives and swords and spears. It’s clear from a glance that the town’s defenders are losing: unprotected by the legions, their weapons are whatever they could gather from their homes and shops; teenagers fight alongside their parents, the same look of hard desperation on their faces; and they’re bunched into a tiny group on the far side of the forum, while the Iceni flood the rest of the space. 

On the sidelines, Serena shudders, a whole-body gulp of revulsion, and drops the knife. She plunges headlong into the fray, dodging bodies and swords and curses, in the vain hope that if she can just get to the other side of the forum, she might be able to flee. It’s not a big forum, after all - not like the main forum in Rome - and it’s so close - 

Something hits her with all the force of an elephant, biting deep into her shoulder and she stumbles, screams, tries to right herself - 

takes a few more faltering steps

and slips in a slick puddle of blood. She tries to put out both her hands to catch her fall but her right arm moves sluggishly, and there’s a brief streak of blue across her peripheral vision but the marble is coming up fast in front of her and her head hits hard against it and then - black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the lovely comments you're leaving; it's absolutely the nicest thing to know that you're enjoying the story! <3


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Serena discovers her injury; she and Berenice reach an understanding.

Wherever she is, it’s dark. 

It’s velvety black, warm and comforting and soft. Behind her eyelids, her eyes dart from side to side, an instinctual movement, and the darkness shifts: lighter and warmer on the right than on the left. She cracks one eye open, then grimaces: the sun is a bright, unforgiving ball of fire, beating down on her. 

Next, a rocking motion weaves its way into her awareness. She closes her eyes again, and listens: the sound of hooves against a dirt road, thudding softly against the impacted dirt. The creaking of horses’ reins against wood - a cart, then; she must be on a cart. She moves the fingers of her left hand slightly where they lie by her side, and discovers rough wood beneath them. She moves the fingers of her right hand, and - 

Pain. It shoots down her arm from her shoulder, radiating across her chest and up her neck. She grimaces, face distorted with the effort it takes not to cry out. She opens her eyes wide, both of them, and is greeted by bright blue sky above her. When she turns her head, just slightly, she can see trees, blurry but green, and in front of them the dark wood of the cart. 

She cranes her head further to her right and another lightning bolt of pain shoots down her arm. She hears herself groan, quietly, in a voice she barely recognises, and feels herself retch, nauseous with the pain.

From the front of the cart there’s an alarmed shout in a language she doesn’t recognise, and a woman swims hazily into view holding a leather bag of water towards her. But it’s too late, and she leans sideways and vomits weakly, before slipping limply into unconsciousness.

The next time she wakes, the pain is slightly less. She opens her eyes with less effort, although it takes her some moments to get accustomed to the gloom. When she turns her head eventually, she discovers that she’s in a small tent, made of leather, rudimentary but stitched together carefully so no water will leak inside. 

This time, she’s more circumspect before she moves. She drags her left hand across her body, inch by inch, towards her right shoulder, steeling herself for what she might find. It’s with an enormous sense of relief that she discovers layers of fine wool material, bound with thin cords to her body. The bandage stretches over the entirety of her shoulder and some way down her arm, although the real pain comes only when she pokes at the centre of her shoulder joint. 

After a few minutes, she takes a deep breath and slowly moves her left hand back to its rightful place at her side. It appears she’s on some kind of low-lying pallet, stuffed with hay, prickly and uncomfortable but a welcome change from the jolting motion of the cart earlier. She moves her legs, trying to work out how big the pallet is, but her left leg only moves a few inches before it is pulled to an abrupt stop. She takes a deep breath and tries to lever herself up on her good arm: a thin chain is looped around her ankle and runs off the side of the pallet, but that’s all she can see.

She lets her head fall back to the pallet and closes her eyes for a minute. To her surprise, the panic from earlier has all but dissipated, even though she has no idea where she is, who is holding her, or what happened in Londinium. Maybe getting stabbed will realign a person’s priorities, she thinks ruefully, and sighs deeply, before wincing: moving her shoulders too much sends a bright shock of pain through her. She lies still for a few moments. Although she strains her ears, she can’t hear anything from outside; or, at least, all she can hear are muffled sounds, like someone’s dragging something from one place to another and trying hard not to make a noise. Dimly, she thinks she should be worried, but she’s tired and the darkness is so soothing and maybe if she just has a nap… 

When she wakes again, the darkness is somehow more complete than before. It feels like a blanket, wrapped around her, suffocating her, and she groans as she tries to sit up. She quickly gives up and lets herself fall back onto the pallet, realising that she has no chance of moving without pain. 

But her groan must have alerted someone outside, because the tent flap is pulled aside to admit an oil lamp’s flickery golden light. She squints and turns her head away as her vision sparks white against the light, but a familiar voice speaks, and reluctantly, she turns back. 

“Serena?” 

A woman is illuminated against the tent flap, blue cloak drawn aside where one hand holds the lamp. Under the cloak Serena glimpses British wool trousers and a pair of sturdy sandals. Almost afraid to look in case she’s wrong, she takes a deep breath and drags her eyes up to meet the woman’s gaze. 

It’s Berenice. 

Her dark eyes glimmer in the light, and despite all her earlier misgivings and suspicions Serena releases a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Berenice moves forward, letting the tent flap fall closed behind her, and Serena turns sideways on her good arm to lever herself to her feet. When she tries to move her legs, though, the chain pulls at her ankle, toppling her off-balance, and she collapses back on the pallet with a groan. But Berenice moves towards her with alacrity, setting her lamp on the ground before bending towards her ankle. 

“What are you doing?” 

“There,” Berenice says, moving away to sit by Serena’s legs on the pallet. Experimentally, Serena moves her legs: this time her left leg meets no resistance and Berenice smiles.

“What am I doing here?” Serena asks, “and where am I?”

Berenice ignores her, leaning over to lift up an edge of the bandage that still covers her shoulder. She must be satisfied with what she finds, because she smoothes it back into place and sits back down. 

“I found you passed out in the forum at Londinium,” she says after a few moments. “You were bleeding badly from a stab wound in your shoulder, so we bandaged you up and brought you with us. Thought it was better than letting you bleed out.” 

“Why?” Serena asks abruptly. “Why would you want to save me?” 

Berenice’s hair is golden in the lamplight and her eyes are dark, but incredulous. “Do you not remember,” she says softly. “I thought…”

The silence stretches a beat too long. 

“What did you think?” Serena demands, voice cracking. “Did you think you were doing me a favour, rescuing me? What are you doing - selling me out to Boudicca?” 

“No! I thought you, you…” Berenice again trails off. Then she seems to gather her courage: “Don’t you remember what happened at the temple?”

Serena closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. 

“Don’t you remember how you covered for me when we were nearly discovered? Don’t you remember how close we were?”

“I’ve been seeing you everywhere I go,” Serena murmurs eventually. “Your blue cloak - in the street, the forum, you’re everywhere.”

Berenice’s hand slides into her own, a warm, strong presence, and Serena’s eyes fly open. 

“I would never betray you,” Berenice admits, voice small in the silence of the tent. 

Serena flushes in the face of Berenice’s unexpected vulnerability, but she plunges on. “Get me out of here, then.”

“I have a plan,” she says, even softer than before.

“What is it?”

“I’m working on it.”

Serena rolls her eyes, but Berenice is gazing at her with a small, uncertain smile, and she smiles back half-unwillingly.

“Truce?” she asks, under her breath.

Berenice nods, smiles, and says, “Truce.”

The next night, Serena is dozing fitfully on the pallet when Berenice slips inside the tent, oil lamp in hand. She opens her eyes when Berenice sinks down on the pallet beside her, and gives her a faint smile. 

“How are you feeling?” Berenice asks in a whisper. 

“Not too bad,” she replies, and rolls over onto her good arm to try and sit up. 

“Don’t, wait - ” Berenice shuffles onto her knees by the pallet and slides one hand under Serena’s back, curling the other around her hip to help her sit upright. “Alright?”

Serena nods. “I’m not so nauseous, and the pain is less than before.”

Berenice nods, a little too rapidly. She’s secretly relieved, Serena thinks to herself, and the last traces of suspicion fall from her mind.

The days blur together, and every morning Serena discovers she is a little more healed. After a few days she is able to sit up without screaming in pain, and a few days later she can walk; slowly, and only with her arm bound tight to her torso, but she manages a few circles around the tent before asking Berenice to help her back to the pallet.

And that’s another thing: Berenice visits, every night. She never arrives during the daylight hours - Serena assumes because her duties at Boudicca’s side leave her too busy, but she never asks and Berenice never volunteers an exact explanation of her position - but every night she arrives after dusk, pushing aside the tent flap with an oil lamp in hand and a soft smile. Despite her earlier suspicion of Berenice, despite her injury, despite the destruction of her home, business, livelihood, Serena can’t help but trust Berenice’s dark eyes when she gazes at her in the tent’s tenebrous light. It’s the softest feeling she’s ever had, and every night when Berenice slips away beyond the tent flap Serena gazes into the comforting dark from her pallet and imagines a future where Berenice might not have to slip away into the dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I *think* (maybe) this is the first chapter that's entirely new. I can't remember totally where I left off posting last time. Anyway, if this is new material, as always, hope you enjoy! Thank you for all the lovely comments!
> 
> I'm posting this a few hours before my country moves out of lockdown. We went into lockdown on 25 March and so far have had 1400-something confirmed cases and 19 deaths; the predictions showed that if we didn't go into lockdown we'd be looking at 1000+ cases a day and potentially 80,000 deaths in a country of 5 million. It's likely that we will see an economic downturn of some sort as a result of the four-week lockdown, but I honestly think it was worth it. All this is to say, I guess, I hope you're keeping safe; I hope you're socially isolating and I hope you're in a position to take care of yourself and your loved ones as much as possible. 
> 
> Still, I'm still working from home for the foreseeable future, which hopefully will mean more time for writing. I have another AU in the works which is far more silly than this one. xx


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Serena meets Boudicca, and she's different from what Serena expected. Berenice and Serena make a pact.

One morning, when Serena’s shoulder has healed enough that she can walk largely without pain, a boy calls her name from outside the tent. She’s sitting on the pallet awkwardly spooning porridge into her mouth with her left hand, but she swallows her mouthful and tells him to come in. 

“You, um. With me,” he says, in very broken Latin, and gestures with his hand that she should come outside with him. 

She sets aside the porridge bowl and stands up, less awkwardly even than a few days earlier, and follows him outside. 

The sky outside is balmy blue, and the camp is busy with both women and men, hurrying from one tent to another, carrying supplies and food and weapons. The boy and Serena dodge around groups of people talking together, and after a few minutes they come to a tent, identical to all the others. The boy pulls the tent flap aside, and Serena walks in. 

It takes a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the gloom but when the white sparks shooting across her vision clear, she sees clearly. There’s a small wooden table directly in front of her, with a jug of water and two cups sitting on top of it. Beyond the table is a rug, a plain chair, and - Boudicca, sitting on the chair, famous red hair tied back in a long plait over her shoulder, eyes fixed on a tablet held in her left hand, a stylus in her right.

Serena freezes. Boudicca doesn’t look up. 

The boy says, “Kneel.”

“I’m not going to kneel!” Serena whips her head around to glare at him, and can’t quite suppress a sharp intake of breath at the pain in her shoulder.

“You must,” he says, beginning to look panicked.

“I will not,” Serena says, louder. “She sacked my city and destroyed my home, and I don’t know what happened to my staff or my business. I’m not going to kneel to someone like her.”

As she moves away to march back outside, the boy grabs her injured shoulder, pressing hard on the site of the wound. Her knees buckle and she goes down, crying out as she catches her fall with her uninjured arm. 

“Enough.” 

Serena painfully cranes her neck upwards to see who spoke. To her surprise, it’s Boudicca: she’s looked up from her tablet and she’s staring at the boy with a hard and level gaze. He backs away, grasping for the tent flap with one hand behind his back, and when he finds the entrance he ducks his head in a quasi-bow before leaving with a look of relief. 

Serena pushes herself upright, but she’s still kneeling and as much as she tries, she can’t transfer her weight without pain shooting through her shoulder. After a few seconds, in her peripheral vision she glimpses Boudicca standing up, her shirt and trousers made of the same rough wool as Berenice’s. She glances up just as Boudicca comes to stand in front of her, presenting her two hands to Serena. 

“What are you - ”

“Give me your hands,” Boudicca says softly. “I’ll help you up.”

To her surprise, a few minutes later Serena finds herself sitting in a chair beside Boudicca, holding a cup of newly-poured, ice-cold water. Both women are silent, and Serena has the distinct impression she’s being sized up. It’s only a little uncomfortable: Boudicca seems to be a master of the art of unobserved observation, but Serena takes the opportunity to do some ogling of her own. 

Boudicca is tall - about as tall as Berenice, Serena thinks to herself - with reddish-golden hair and dark blue eyes. She moves with grace and assurance, like a person accustomed to authority. She sits with her back very straight; proud, but not arrogant.

“I apologise for that,” Boudicca says abruptly, into the silence of the tent. “You are a Cam Beul; you’re one of us. There was no need for you to kneel.”

“I, uh,” Serena clears her throat. Boudicca’s Latin is near-flawless, only the merest hint of an accent, and it takes her by surprise. 

“How is your shoulder?” 

Serena moves it experimentally as Boudicca looks on; it’s no more painful than it was before the boy pushed her, and she shrugs a little with her good shoulder in reply. Serena reaches over to the table to take a sip of her water, and they lapse back into an awkward silence.

Minutes later, Serena notices a flash of silver and green, in Boudicca’s hand where it’s half-hidden by her jacket. She’s turning something over in her hand, compulsively like a way to relieve stress, the same way Serena sometimes flips her stylus between her fingers while she’s checking the accounts. She palms the object a few more times, but Serena’s unable to see what it is until, noticing her interest, Boudicca extends her hand to her, palm flat, the object sitting there for her to see. It could almost be interpreted as a friendly gesture - and Serena thought maybe, possibly, there was the beginnings of an understanding between them, since Boudicca helped her up from the floor and told her she ought not to kneel - but on her palm sits Serena’s signet ring, the emerald leopard unchipped, the silver undamaged. Serena reaches out, an aborted movement, and Boudicca closes her fingers over the ring and pulls her hand back, glancing at Serena.

“Where did you get that?” Serena asks, a little proud that her voice is more or less steady. 

Boudicca shakes her head. 

“Where did you get that,” Serena repeats, steel creeping into her voice.

Boudicca opens her mouth, but pauses, glancing down at the heavy ring in her palm. “You did well under the Romans.”

“Yes, I damn well did,” Serena replies, pushing herself forward to sit on the very edge of her chair. “Where did you get my ring?”

“You are unaware of what others of us have suffered,” Boudicca says. “You belong here with us, not with the Roman invaders, making their wine, collecting their money.”

“What did Britain ever do for me?”

“We’re your people,” Boudicca says, and smiles, sadly, at the side of her mouth. “There’s no force in the world that could change that.”

That night, Berenice slips through the tent flap as dusk falls. Serena’s spent the last few hours after the end of her conversation with Boudicca sitting on her pallet, staring into the middle distance of the opposite side of the tent. She glances up when Berenice comes in, though; glances up and even smiles a little, although it’s distracted, like she’s not fully present. 

“I brought tea,” Berenice says, eyes hopeful.

Serena stretches out a hand for the cup, taking a long sniff of the steam wafting off the cup. She smiles at Berenice as she sits next to Serena on the pallet, and they sit for a few moments in an increasingly comfortable silence. 

And then Serena breaks it. “What happened at the summer house?” Berenice glances at her, sideways, one eyebrow raised. “You know, the one about a mile outside Londinium, in the Herculaneum style, with the peristylium in a circle instead of a square. The one apparently you demolished, or broke into, or whatever happened.”

Berenice visibly takes a moment to ready herself, and when she answers it’s only to mumble, “Right. That one.”

“What happened, Berenice,” Serena says, turning her good shoulder to the tent wall to stare at her. “Why am I hearing this from Boudicca, of all people?”

“I had no idea it was yours,” Berenice mumbles.

Serena takes a deep breath, doing her best to calm down. “What happened?”

Berenice shakes her head, gazing fixedly at the cup in her hand. 

“Seriously,” Serena murmurs, and her hand creeps into Berenice’s, her small, square palm and strong fingers warming Berenice from the inside out.. “What happened?” 

“You might hate me,” Berenice warns, eyes locked on Serena’s. 

“I could never hate you,” Serena replies, her voice warm despite the creeping fear in her heart.

“On our way to Londinium,” Berenice begins, “we chanced upon this house. It seemed empty, and we were running low on water and we thought perhaps there would be a well in the courtyard.”

“There’s no well in that house,” Serena interrupts, “only a communal well near the street.”

“Yes, but we didn’t know that at the time,” Berenice continues. “Instead, we were interrupted by a young woman and an older woman, while we were trying to find the well. Someone panicked and killed the young woman, but the older woman was captured.” 

“Who killed Iris - the young woman?”

Berenice shakes her head; Serena feels her shoulders tense.

“No point,” Berenice says softly. “Really - he was killed at Londinium anyway.”

To her shame, Serena relaxes, and she nods, looking down at their hands. “What about Enica?”

“The older woman? She works with us, as a cook.” At her surprised glance, Berenice smiles. “She was keen to help out. Said this was where she belonged.” 

Serena hums under her breath, a little noise of assent. “She said something like that to me too, a while ago. I didn’t understand what she meant, but I might be beginning to now.”

They sit in silence for a while, and it’s only when Serena raises her cup to her mouth to take a sip that she realises they’re still holding hands. But it’s sweet, comforting, and ever since she laid eyes on Berenice in the Temple of Jupiter there’s been a shiver in her stomach whenever she’s around her, and so when she finishes her tea she wriggles down the pallet slightly and lays her head on Berenice’s shoulder, where she can feel her collar bone against her cheek. She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, and she can feel an answering sigh from Berenice as they both close their eyes and wait for the dawn.

The next night, Berenice doesn’t appear. Serena waits, becoming more and more anxious in the tent, until eventually she levers herself off the pallet, wincing as she bangs her shoulder against a tent pole, picks up an oil lamp and walks outside. The sky is pitch black, and she chews the inside of her cheek as she realises that it must be later than she’d thought. She wanders around for a bit, looping around the tent, hoping that Berenice hasn’t simply got cold feet - or, even worse, that maybe it was all just a big joke - before she decides to simply go back inside. But before she can do so, she hears a whispered shout coming from a few tents away. She turns around.

It’s Berenice, and beside her is a smaller woman, swathed in a long shawl, walking beside her with a slight limp. As they get closer the other woman is illuminated by the flickering light of Serena’s oil lamp, and - 

“Enica!” Serena exclaims, louder than she’d intended, and throws her arm around her.

Berenice pulls them both inside the tent and Serena smiles gratefully at her, thinks briefly about kissing her on the cheek. But Enica’s right there, and - she coughs slightly and turns away.

“What happened to you?” Enica says, poking gently at the bandage that still covers Serena’s shoulder under her dress.

“Got hit by a sword in Londinium,” Serena replies, hastily adding, “by accident! It was an accident, I wasn’t fighting.”

Enica frowns, glancing her up and down. “You’ve looked better, I must say. Is she being fed enough?” - this to Berenice, who nods emphatically. 

“I heard you made it to the summer house,” Serena says. At the corner of her eye she glimpses Berenice, slipping outside the tent flap, and she’s grateful for the privacy. 

Enica nods. “I suppose we startled the party who came looking for water. Iris was first into the room when we heard them, that’s the only reason she was killed.”

“And you?” Serena asks, uncharacteristically gentle. 

“I don’t belong in Londinium,” Enica says, and sighs. Serena glances at her: she’s twisting her hands in her lap, her strong hands, wrinkled from years of hard work and sun exposure. “You know that, Serena,” she continues. “This is the old Britain; I belong here.”

“But you virtually brought me up!” Serena sounds plaintive even to her own ears. “You were who I ran to when Marcus from down the road bullied me when I was nine, when I wanted to go to rhetoric school and my father forbade me, when my mother died. If you aren’t part of the new Britain, where am I?”

Enica smiles, eyes crinkling at the sides into deep laughter lines, and reaches out to pat Serena’s cheek. “That’s something you have to work out for yourself,” she says softly. “But whatever happens tomorrow, my place is here.”

She stands up, smoothing down the brown wool of her dress as Serena clambers to her feet. They hug, Enica’s arms a familiar reminder of home around Serena’s back. As they part, Serena wraps her good arm around her waist, biting her lip. 

“What is it?” Enica asks.

“What’s happening tomorrow?” 

Enica glances at Serena, and abruptly Serena understands what she’d meant about not belonging to the new Britain. It’s a dark, fierce look, a young woman’s eyes staring joyful and bold out of an old woman’s face, and she can’t help but shiver.

“Tomorrow,” Enica replies, “we fight.” 

She smiles and immediately she’s herself again, Serena’s old nurse. But Serena’s unease remains, and as Enica pulls the tent flap aside and walks out into the velvety night, she wonders what Enica might have been like, younger, unafraid and proud. The thought makes her feel oddly queasy and as she sits back down on the pallet she realises that she might have spent her entire life pursuing the wrong priorities.

Berenice pokes her head through the tent flap after a few moments. “Mind if I come in?”

Serena shakes her head, and Berenice comes the rest of the way into the tent. She looks tense, anxious in a way Serena’s never seen her before. Serena pats the empty pallet beside her. After an uncertain glance towards her, as if she’s not sure Serena really means the invitation, Berenice sits down, bringing her knees up towards the edge of the pallet and wrapping her arms around them. She takes a deep breath.

“So, tomorrow,” Serena says casually.

Berenice nods. 

“How’s the plan going?” 

“Don’t worry, Serena, I’ll get you out of here.”

Surprised at her tone, Serena examines Berenice in her peripheral vision. She looks outright miserable, hugging her knees closely to her chest, and tentatively, Serena covers a knee with one hand. Immediately, Berenice covers it with her own hand, and Serena lets herself gaze at her a little more openly.

“I don’t think I can do this again,” Berenice whispers, glancing up at her from where she’s buried her face in her knees.

“Do what again?” Serena asks, her voice as low as she can make it. 

“Another fight,” Berenice replies. “I’m so tired, Serena, and…” 

She trails off and falls silent. Her hand is sinewy-strong over Serena’s where it rests on her knee and her blonde hair tumbles over her face in an unruly cascade, and Serena wants nothing more than to bury her free hand in it, a tangible reminder that they’re both here, they’re alive. So she does, reaching up awkwardly with her injured arm and brushing away a few strands of silken hair that have fallen over Berenice’s eyes. Berenice makes a little sound in the back of her throat, and Serena immediately pulls away. 

“Sorry,” she says, blushing fiercely. “I don’t know why I did that, I…” 

“Do it again,” Berenice whispers, dark eyes fixed on her. “Please.”

Serena raises an eyebrow, skeptical, but Berenice nods and so she moves her hand back, tangling her fingers in Berenice’s golden-blonde hair, so soft, so silky beneath her fingers, and it’s so absurdly chaste but it feels like so much more, and after a while she realises that Berenice’s eyes have slipped shut and she’s cradling her head in her hands the way a lover might. She clears her throat, abruptly nervous, and Berenice’s eyes open, darker than she’s ever seen them before. Time suspends itself, like an insect caught in amber, and neither speaks. They gaze at each other until Serena’s gaze flicks to Berenice’s lips, bitten red and slightly parted, and Serena gasps in surprise. Within a heartbeat Berenice leans forward and captures Serena’s lips in a kiss, and Serena’s eyes slide shut. Her lips are so warm, and even if Serena’s never done this before with a woman it feels so natural, so right that when Berenice moves back after a few moments she tries to follow, seeking her lips like she might seek a fine wine.

But she opens her eyes instead, breathing fast and cheeks burning, only to see that Berenice is similarly affected. She smiles a little, instinctively, and Berenice smiles back before Serena moves forward in a hurried surge of movement to kiss her again. 

Serena loses track of time, cradling Berenice’s jaw in one hand as their fingers intertwine in the other, and it’s perfect. It feels like home, and when they eventually part, eyes dark with unexplored desire, she says as much. 

“I don’t want to go without you.” 

Berenice ducks her head and smiles, just at the corner of her mouth. “I don’t want to stay without you,” she murmurs, and Serena’s heart fills with love and joy and relief. 

“We go together, then,” she offers. 

Berenice glances up at her, eyes surprised but resolute, and she nods firmly, grasping her hand like an oath. “Together,” she says, and kisses her at the corner of her mouth, a promise and a covenant all in one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly I have just a tiny smidgen of a crush on Boudicca. Hope it didn't show haha
> 
> Thank you for all the lovely comments <3


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Serena and Berenice decide to put their plan into action.

The next morning dawns cool, the air inside the tent crisp as Serena wakes up. The inside of the tent is dim, light filtering in muted shades under the tent flap where it wasn’t properly fastened last night. Serena turns her head on the pallet towards her injured shoulder, and it stings, but only a little. She sits up, scrubs at her eyes with one hand and dresses herself with quick, sharp movements. 

She pulls the tent flap aside. People are hurrying from one side of the camp to another, dismantling the tents around hers and loading them on carts. Serena stands in the entrance to her tent and stares. It’s a highly-organised operation: nobody is standing idle, and everyone looks like they know their job. A girl rushes past her tent, pauses, and then walks back. She deposits a bowl of porridge into Serena’s hands. 

She says, “Here, eat this, and then go and sit on the cart over there,” and she points to a cart directly opposite the tent, a few metres away. 

Serena nods and asks, “Have you seen Berenice?” but the girl has already sped up and is out of sight.

She sighs, and walks over to the cart as she begins to eat the porridge. She sits down and watches the rest of the camp pack up, ready to depart, but no matter where she looks, she can’t find Berenice. 

By the time the cart’s driver arrives, she’s worked herself into a panic and she accosts him as soon as he walks up. 

“Have you seen Berenice?” she asks. 

He smiles. “No, but she’s around here somewhere,” he says, and pauses, one hand on the carthorse’s reins. “Don’t worry about it. She’ll turn up.”

She rolls her eyes, but he flicks the reins over the horse’s back and they’re off. After a few minutes the clearing in which the camp had been set had vanished, and they were again on the road, winding their way through a forest. In front of them another cart traveled, and a third behind them, and in none of them was Berenice.

Hours later, the cart shudders to a halt. Serena’s curled up in the back beside the bags of dried fruit and corn, lying on her good side and trying not to let the cart’s vibrations affect her injured shoulder. It’s aching, with a deep, musculoskeletal pain that worries her at the back of her mind, and she hopes she hasn’t re-injured it. Nevertheless, when the cart comes to a stop, she levers herself up and looks around. They’re in a vast field, with gently rolling hills all around them and a forest towards the west. 

The cart driver jumps down from his perch at the front of the cart and extends his hand to Serena, who’s very grateful to grasp it to step gingerly down from the cart. She smiles in thanks as she reaches the ground, turning to look at the vista in front of them

“This is where we meet Paulinus,” she says after a while, and it’s phrased like a question even though there’s no uncertainty about it. 

The cart driver nods. “We’ll push the Romans out of Britain,” he says, equally as quietly.

She shoots a sharp glance at him, surprised by his conviction, and for a second his face uncreases and a spark of mischief glints in his eyes. 

“Go,” he says, waving a hand at her. “There’s somewhere you need to be, and I need to unload these.”

She smiles briefly, before her worry about Berenice fills her mind again. But she turns away and heads away to a quiet corner beside a tree, where a fallen log provides her a place to sit and keep out of the way as the camp becomes busier. 

Over the next few hours the camp fills up again with people. The Britons draw the carts up in a large semicircle facing the flat plain where they will meet Paulinus, cutting off any possible escape route but, so they believe, urging them on to fight harder, faster, more brutally. The air fills with the sound of metal on metal as both men and women sharpen their knives in preparation. Lulled by the rhythmic sounds, Serena falls into a daydream, gazing off into the middle distance. Her eyes glaze over and idly she wonders what she’d be doing if Boudicca hadn’t come to Londinium. Chatting with Gavrus at his banking kiosk, maybe, or enjoying a flagon of wine with Rufus at the fort. Coming home flushed with the pleasure of concluding a new business deal - she smiles to herself: she’s always loved that feeling - only to eat a quick solitary dinner and fall into bed alone. Her smile droops. How had she not realised how lonely she was? She’d been a respectable woman, married and divorced, a woman making her way in a world that was still dominated by men. She’d thought that was all she needed: safety, security, and enough money to protect against the uncertain vagaries of the future. 

How could she have been so wrong? How could she have been so wrong, and not realised? Londinium had been safe, true, but she ought to have understood what she was missing as soon as her eyes kept looking for Berenice’s blue cloak. As soon as they had collapsed towards each other in the garden at the Temple of Jupiter, like something pre-ordained by the gods, her hands at Berenice’s waist, Berenice’s eyes on hers, she should have realised. But that’s love, she thinks, and the thought startles her. That’s the process of falling in love: an inevitability.

A throat clears behind her, and she jumps, turning around. Berenice is hovering awkwardly beside the log. Serena smiles, and Berenice takes it as an invitation to sit down beside her, hands fidgeting in her lap. She’s clearly nervous, and after a few seconds Serena covers her hands, pulling them apart and sliding her own hand between them. Berenice sighs, and Serena’s mouth twitches in a wry little smile. 

“I was worried when I couldn’t find you earlier,” Serena says eventually, glancing up. 

Berenice blushes, a bright wash of pink over her cheeks, and mumbles something under her breath. 

Serena’s eyebrow hitches itself further up her forehead. 

“We’ll meet Paulinus here in battle tomorrow,” Berenice says, louder. 

“Not me!” Serena retorts. “Nor you either. How’s the plan going?”

Berenice shrugs. “Do you trust me?”

Serena glances up: despite the casualness of the question Berenice is tense, mouth pulled to one side like she’s bracing herself for bad news. Without hesitation, Serena squeezes Berenice’s hand between her own. “Of course I do,” she says, and when Berenice glances at her in surprise and pleasure she leans sideways and kisses her carefully on the lips. Berenice’s eyes flutter shut and she leans into the kiss, and at the back of her mind Serena thinks, this is home, wherever she is. 

Eventually she pulls back, delighted to see that when Berenice opens her eyes the pupils are dark, blown wide with lust. Their gazes catch and hold for a few seconds, until Berenice clears her throat again and glances away.

“There’s a tent for you for tonight. I’ll be back in a few hours,” she mumbles, staring down at their intertwined hands before looking back at Serena. “Be ready to move when I find you.”

Serena nods, and in a rush of movement Berenice untangles their hands, stands up and walks quickly away, glancing back over her shoulder as she goes.

The next morning Serena is awoken by the harsh, braying sound of the cornu. She’s heard its smaller cousin, the buccina, regularly used to signal the watch change on the fort at Londinium, and for a moment, caught in the fog of sleep, she assumes she’s back at the villa, waking up after a long dinner party with clients, and any minute Iris will open the door, balancing her breakfast on a tray…

She rolls over, happy at the thought of the day ahead, and promptly puts all her weight onto her injured shoulder, sending a jolt of pain down her arm and across her back. She yelps, eyes flying open, and sits upright on the straw pallet, clutching her shoulder.

So, not in Londinium, after all. 

The cornu brays again, sounding the end of the first watch, and she flinches. The battle must be about to begin, she thinks, and she shuffles on her knees over to the tent flap and twitches it aside. 

A few hundred metres away, the carts have been drawn up in one long, continuous line. They’re mostly empty, with only a few barrels of supplies left scattered haphazardly around. Tents, in various stages of tidiness, litter the ground in front of the carts. In front of them stand Boudicca’s army, already clad in leather armour and helmets, short swords and spears at the ready. They mill around in a disorganised mass, slouching against the carts and picking at their teeth as they joke together. If they’re nervous, none of them show it. Serena turns her head further, and for a moment her breath sticks in her throat: Paulinus’ army is drawn up on the other side of the plain, rows upon rows of men carrying sword and spear and pila, the short, iron-tipped spears that spell death to an advancing army. For an instance she sees them through British eyes, these brutal, brutalised men whose whole sense of honour and glory forbids them to offer any mercy, any quarter. She shudders, terrified and despising herself for it. Less than two weeks past the leaders of these men would have been guests around her table, and she would have considered herself honoured by their presence, yet today… Briefly, she thinks of running out of the tent and throwing herself on the mercy of the first centurion she finds, before she dismisses the idea entirely. What would she even do if she got back to Londinium? What would she do without Berenice?

The thought startles her, and she pulls her head back through the tent flap in consternation. It’s not that she loves Berenice, she thinks as she stretches her back out and stands up, knees sore from the earthen floor. It’s just that Berenice is good to be around. It’s just that she’s become used to her elusive, sporadic presence, the way she smiles at Serena when she arrives at the tent, how her dark eyes sparkle and light up when she sees her…

It’s just that Serena can’t imagine a life without her.

“Be ready to move when I find you,” Berenice had said last night. Serena had refused to think about what the future might hold for them, a mere ten hours ago when Berenice had seen her last. But in the cold light of morning, the cornu braying harshly on the field outside, as she packs the pallet away and tidies herself up, she finds her mind returning to her hazy ideas of a future together. Would they live in Londinium? How would they earn a living? Would Berenice be a fugitive from Roman law, living a desperate existence beyond Roman borders, relying on the kindness of strangers to feed her and shelter her? Would every moment be a terror? Serena’s hands pause on the bedsheet and she shakes her head, sick inside at the thought of another life filled with uncertainty and fear. “There must be another way,” she mumbles to herself, half because she means it and half because hearing the words spoken aloud gives her an incipient feeling of possibility.

An hour later, by dint of hunching uncomfortably on the pallet, wracking her brain and planning her ideas on the dirt in front of her, Serena has the beginning outlines of a plan. It’s not much, but it’s enough that she feels galvanised and a little more confident. Then the tent flap opens, and Serena glances up. It’s Berenice, clad simply in her woollen trousers and blue travelling cloak; in one hand she carries a bag while the other grips the tent flap. They lock eyes, and for an instance the world melts away, despite the bellow of the cornu as it advances across the field. 

Berenice stretches out her hand. “Will you come?” 

Serena gazes at her, her last chance, her best hope, her only love; and then she clambers to her feet and clasps Berenice’s hand in her own. “I will,” she says, and smiles.

The sounds of the battle follow them into the forest. They run, hands still intertwined, stumbling over roots and pushing aside branches with their free hands. Early morning light filters through the trees, their branches tangling thick overhead, painting dappled sunlight across their faces as they flee. It’s both idyllic and terrifying, and with the last part of her brain that’s not terrified out of her wits, Serena reflects that this would be a beautiful place for a summer house. Except it’s not, really; less than a mile away people she’s come to know and respect are fighting for their lives, and if the legions catch up with them there won’t be time to explain: both she and Berenice will be killed, dispassionately and without mercy. Her breath hitches, a tiny sob caught in her throat, and she catches one toe on a root, trips, and goes flying. 

“Fuck,” she exclaims under her breath, as she lands on her hands and knees in the dirt. Leaves crunch under her fingers, ripped from Berenice’s in the shock of the fall, and she digs her hands further into the soil as she pushes herself up into a sitting position. Her shoulder sends a shockwave of pain through her system and tears spring involuntarily to her eyes. She glances upwards to find Berenice crouching beside her, one hand on her uninjured shoulder.

“I can’t,” she gasps, holding her side where a stitch is rapidly forming.

Berenice reaches into her bag and pulls out a water skin. “You can,” she says. “You have to.”

Carefully, Serena tilts the water skin to her mouth. Through the trees’ green canopy filters the sound of the cornu, the shouts and screams of the battle, louder now they’re no longer running. Serena shivers, and Berenice’s hand on her shoulder tightens like a spasm. 

“We need to,” Berenice mutters, trailing off as she seals the water skin and shoves it abruptly back in her bag. Serena clambers to her feet, hissing at the pain in her shoulder, her hands and her side. But Berenice wraps her free hand around her waist, her palm a warm presence at her ribs, and together they walk away. After a few moments the cornu sounds again, and, after a brief glance, Berenice slips her hand from Serena’s waist and they run, hand in hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boudicca’s last stand is known as the Battle of Watling Street, which takes place near a town called Viroconium. It’s now called Wroxeter (English names are WEIRD) in Shropshire. Despite this name, the geography I’ve described is fairly accurate: Tacitus mentions that the area had a narrow gorge with a forest behind the General Suetonius Paulinus, and a wide plain that opened out in front of the Roman armies. This is all pretty much as I’ve described it.
> 
> Wow so much for my whole ~oh yeah I'm gonna post every two days on schedule ahahaha. Work's been crazy busy this week. Still, enjoy xx


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Berenice experiences a loss, and returns something of Serena's. Serena gives Berenice something in return. They reach the summer house and, (because I know you've all been waiting for this!) they have s e x. O.O

The next morning dawns freezing but bright. Serena awakens slowly, wrapped in Berenice’s cloak. The ground beneath her is lumpy and cold, but the cloak’s wool keeps her from shivering. Stiff with yesterday’s unaccustomed burst of activity, she levers herself to a sitting position and glances around. 

She’s still in the woods, hidden from view by a small embankment covered with vines, leaves and branches. It takes Serena a second glance to realise that it’s not a natural occurrence; the foliage has been draped too artfully, and she guesses that it’s Berenice’s work.

“Speaking of whom…” Serena mumbles to herself, and closes her eyes so that she can listen more closely to the whispering sounds of the forest around her. But despite her best efforts, she can’t hear anything that might be Berenice’s footsteps. On the bright side, she can’t hear anyone else’s footsteps either, so she grasps a nearby branch and clambers shakily to her feet. At her full height the embankment doesn’t shield her, and so she shakes out Berenice’s blue cloak and begins walking, glancing around in the hope of finding Berenice. 

A few minutes later she hears a shout from somewhere in front of her, and she freezes. Is it Berenice, or marauding Romans? There’s no way to tell who might be ahead, and without conscious thought she ducks behind a tree, feeling the sharp, rough bark dig into her spine. 

The shout comes again, closer this time: “Serena!”

She recognises the voice as Berenice’s, but still she hesitates, caught in some nameless terror. She clutches the trunk of the tree with one hand while she digs the fingers of her other hand deeper into Berenice’s cloak, draped over her shoulder. Her breathing is loud in her ears. 

“Serena,” the voice says, “it’s me.”

It’s Berenice’s voice, and Serena’s panic dissipates. Feeling somewhat silly, she emerges from behind the tree to find Berenice standing a few metres away, bag in hand. 

“Hi,” Serena says, one hand still clasped in the cloak.

“Hi,” Berenice replies. “Did you think I’d left?” 

“No!” Serena says, then pauses, and her eyes slide to the ground. “Maybe. A little bit.” 

Brown leather shoes step into her field of vision, and the hems of a pair of checked woollen trousers. Berenice’s hand is by her jaw, and she lifts Serena’s face upwards to gaze into her eyes. Serena blinks, feeling a sting begin behind her eyes. 

“I’ll never leave you,” Berenice murmurs, a soft smile on her lips. 

“Really?” 

Berenice’s eyes are very dark as she nods, and it’s that - the assurance that there’s no lie behind the words, no hint of dissembling - that convinces Serena more than anything else. She exhales once, a soft gasp for air, and clutches at Berenice’s sleeves as she murmurs in turn, “I’ll never leave you either.” 

“I know,” Berenice begins to say, but it’s whispered against Serena’s lips as she leans in for a kiss, and Serena begins to hope again. 

When they part, Berenice’s eyes are shining, glimmering with unshed tears. Serena swallows back the beginnings of a sob, and blurts, “We should try and make it to my summer house.”

Berenice steps back, visibly reluctantly, and hitches her bag higher on her shoulder. “Is it close?”

“Only a few miles west, I think,” Serena says. “It’ll be shelter, and there may be food.” 

Berenice nods in assent. As they turn to go, Serena stretches out a hand to Berenice, who carefully intertwines their fingers together.

They walk for what feels like years. The landscape remains the same, a narrow forest path through giant oaks and ancient cedars. The undergrowth twists around their ankles as soon as they stray off the path, and they quickly learn to watch for vines and branches straggling across the path. The forest is unusually quiet, only the trees’ rustling and the faint sounds of birds breaking the silence, and instinctively they keep their voices low, only talking when necessary.

They walk, and they walk, and they walk. They stop occasionally to sip the water in Berenice’s waterskin and to sit on a fallen log to rest their weary legs, but when they glance ahead and behind and the forest shows no sign of ending, they clasp hands and walk on in silence. 

After hours of walking the forest begins to thin. Within another hour it ends, and in front of them lies a small village, no more than a few houses dotted around a central field. Sheep and goats are wandering free between the houses, and one of the goats, small and speckled black, bumbles up to Serena and Berenice, nudging at their legs in hope of food. Berenice smiles and gently pushes the animal away, and it wanders off towards a field on the other side of the village. They follow it, staying far enough behind that they don’t look like sheep-poachers. 

The houses are round, in the traditional Celtic style, with thatched roofs that extend from a high central point to the ground. The singular door at the front of each house is made from strong, straight branches, woven together with supple hazel branches into a nearly-impregnable shield. The door of the house nearest to them is open, though: swung halfway and propped into position with a large stone. As they move closer Serena realises that the stone isn’t nearly as large as it looked at first glance; a small grey cat is sitting on top of it, glaring at them with wide orange eyes.

“Oh!” Serena darts forward with one hand outstretched, Berenice and their current predicament entirely forgotten. But the cat lets out a single “Mrrrp!” and darts off the stone, running into the house in a lithe streak of grey. Serena stops still, feeling crestfallen. When Berenice catches up Serena glances sideways only to see Berenice’s mouth twist in an amused expression.

“I was going to - ” Serena starts, but a woman emerges from the house and both Serena and Berenice’s attention snaps to the newcomer. 

“We’re just passing through,” Berenice says, as Serena sizes the woman up. She’s dressed in the style of the Britons, with warm trousers and a tunic instead of the long dresses favoured by Roman women. Her long, reddish-blond hair is coiled into a utilitarian topknot that reads as utterly careless to Roman eyes… but Serena rather likes it.

“You look like you’ve been travelling for a while,” the woman says, with a sharp glance over both of them. “Come and freshen up; it’s the least I can do.”

Berenice glances at Serena before agreeing, as if Serena would refuse the opportunity to clean up after a night in the forest. 

A few moments later, in a small, walled-off area inside the house, Serena is washing her face and hands in a small carved bowl provided. In the background, faintly, there are the sounds of the woman and Berenice talking, but the feeling of scrubbing her face clean is so delightful she can’t quite bring herself to care. There are none of the unguents she’s used to - no almond oil or rosewater, nothing she can use to darken her eyes or rouge her cheeks - but the cool water on her face is heavenly and her hands still in the bowl, pausing for a moment to enjoy it.

“You spent the night in the forest?” she can hear the woman’s voice despite the partition, and her ears prick up. 

“Yes.” Berenice, taciturn as ever. 

“She’s a Roman,” the woman says quietly, “but you’re not, you’re as British as I am.” 

“I won’t discuss - ”

“No, no, I’d never give you away. But you’re trying to escape, aren’t you?”

A long pause, during which Serena is careful not to splash the water too much. 

Then, reluctantly: “We left Boudicca’s camp before they met the Roman legions in battle.”

“Oh.” A soft exhale of breath from the woman, and Serena tenses.

“Boudicca was defeated,” she says. “Her followers were slaughtered by Paulinus in their thousands. It’s rumoured Boudicca killed herself rather than be captured.”

Beyond the partition, there’s a small, choked sound as if Berenice has been punched in the stomach, and without thinking Serena flies into the main room of the house, wet hands and all. Berenice is standing motionless in the middle of the room, still holding her bag in one hand, and when Serena enters the room she turns towards her like a sunflower to the light. Her face is almost expressionless, but her eyes are dark and pleading and her mouth is trembling. 

“You’re sure?” Serena asks the woman, while one hand steals to Berenice’s waist. Berenice sinks into Serena’s grasp, posture loosening nearly imperceptibly. 

The woman nods. “I’m truly sorry. The road has been full of legionnaires for the past day, bringing the news back with them to Londinium.” 

“Well, we can’t use that road,” Serena murmurs, and beside her Berenice shakes her head. 

“We were hoping to make our way to Venonis,” Berenice says, voice small.

“There’s a route through the forest,” the woman says, brushing a stray lock of hair out of her face and turning aside to a bench along one wall, where food is stored. “I’ll give you some food for the journey. You can’t make it in this state.”

“I don’t want to impose,” Serena starts, but, unusually, there’s Berenice’s hand on her shoulder and Berenice whispering into her ear: “She supported Boudicca. We don’t have anything to fear.”

The woman turns back towards them, holding a small bag of food in one hand and a new wineskin in the other. “She’s right,” she says to Serena. “As soon as you leave, I’ll forget you were ever here.”

It’s a risk, Serena knows, but trusting this woman is hardly the most reckless thing Serena’s done since this whole nightmare started, and so, reluctantly, she nods, taking the bag with her free hand. 

“We’ll get out of your way,” she says softly. “But thank you.”

The woman smiles, and they slip back out the door, walking quickly and purposefully toward the forest to find the path towards Venonis and a new, uncertain future.

That night, they make camp beside a small stream that trickles through the forest. It’s not a particularly defensible spot, although they’re surrounded by a number of large trees that cluster together to form a small shaded area. As soon as they decide to stop here for the night, Berenice shrugs the bag off her shoulder and sinks to the ground, resting her arms on her knees and her head on her arms, heedless of the damp leaves beneath her.

Serena busies herself setting up a rudimentary camp, but it’s hard to ignore Berenice’s crumpled shape on the forest floor, and after a few moments she finds herself drifting back to sit beside her, one hand on her back. Berenice makes no outward sign that she’s aware of Serena beside her, but after a few minutes Serena hears an abrupt hiccup and Berenice’s shoulders shake briefly. 

Serena grimaces to herself. She’s surprised to have such mixed feelings about Boudicca’s demise. Yes, the woman was responsible for a hell of a lot of destruction, including the destruction of the only life Serena had ever really known - but in person she’d been very different to the harridan image Serena had held of her. Serena had almost begun to respect her, and that, more than anything, shows her how much she’s changed in the last few weeks. It’s a sobering idea, and she lays her head on Berenice’s shoulder, gazing across the stream, lost in thought. 

After a while, Berenice stirs, sitting up and briskly wiping the tears from her face before she scrabbles briefly in her bag. 

“Here,” she says, turning back to Serena. “You should have this.” 

She reaches for Serena’s hand and presses something into it. When Serena looks, she realises it’s her emerald leopard signet ring, unscratched and unbattered by its travails. Her heart jumps unevenly in her chest: it’s the strangest feeling, like she’s come back from some sort of legal death.

But she pauses, turning it over in her fingers, looking at the leopard’s engraved claws, its inlaid jewelled eyes. “I never thought I’d see this again.”

“Boudicca gave it to me before the battle began,” Berenice mumbles. “I think - I don’t know. But I think she knew about us.” She glances at Serena, dark eyes red-rimmed. “It’ll help you re-establish yourself in Londinium, in any event.”

Serena slides the ring onto her ring finger, its heavy weight comforting and oddly foreign, and then she slides her hand onto Berenice’s knee, admiring the flash of the jewels and the taut strength of muscle underneath her hand.

“And where will you be while I’m doing that?”

Berenice shrugs. “I don’t know where I’d fit in your Roman villa, your Roman lifestyle. I’m sure there are legionnaires looking for me right now.”

“I’m not going back without you,” Serena blurts, louder than she’d intended. “I’d rather be dead.”

Berenice rears back as if she’d been hit. “You don’t mean that.” It’s so quiet Serena can barely hear her. 

“Yes I do,” Serena replies. She can feel herself blushing, face growing hot, but she plunges on. “I’d destroy this ring rather than lose you. I can’t imagine living without you.”

There’s a stark pause, Berenice gazing at her in shock, and in the silence the birds begin their twilight chorus. 

“You can’t?” Berenice asks eventually, face as pale and as drawn as Serena’s ever seen her.

“No,” Serena replies, her smile fond. “I love you.” 

“Oh,” Berenice mumbles. “You… do?” 

“Yes.”

“I…” Berenice clears her throat, closes her eyes. “Yes.” 

Serena edges closer, placing a gentle hand on Berenice’s cheek, and waits. After a few seconds her eyes open. They’re swimming with tears, but she smiles, tremulously and then abruptly fiercely, and she surges forward and claims Serena’s mouth with a kiss. Serena sighs, a little involuntary exhale, and abruptly they’re kissing in earnest, Berenice’s hand on her jawline, and she scrabbles forward awkwardly to get closer and finally - finally! - there’s the warm weight of Berenice against her. In her eagerness they overbalance and Berenice falls back against the leafy ground, eyes wide and lips kiss-bitten. She’s a vision - a vision Serena had been searching for all her life but had retained no hope of ever finding - and amid laughter Serena reaches for her again, and then there’s no more time for thought.

They reach the summer house late the next afternoon. 

It’s an overcast day and the clouds cast strange, changing shadows on the ground as they walk out of the forest. The cobblestones of the path leading to the front door have become crooked as weeds have sprung up between them, and the little garden in front of the house is completely overgrown, even the vines that Serena planted several summers ago in a fit of romanticism. The house itself is still standing, though; the glass in the windows is still intact, as is the whitewashed door, even if it is hanging unlocked, creaking in the breeze.

Serena can feel Berenice’s nervous glance towards her as they walk together up the path towards the door. It’s the first time they’ve been so firmly on her turf, so to speak, even if it’s now nothing more than a shadow of its former glory. It stings, a little, the idea that Berenice might not completely trust her - might not trust her as much as she now trusts Berenice? - but it’s understandable. She pauses in front of the door and senses Berenice coming to a stop beside her. Glancing up at the cracked whitewashing, she makes a conscious decision to remember that Berenice is now on the run from the Roman authorities, divorced both from the movement she was fighting for and from her own people, and she takes a deep breath and slides her hand into Berenice’s before she pushes open the door.

The atrium is completely empty. Serena releases a breath she didn’t realise she was holding, and they walk further into the house. 

The water in the traditional pool in the middle of the atrium is still and slightly green. After being left undisturbed for so long, it smells vaguely musty. Structurally, though, it’s utterly quiescent; there are no bodies within the pool, nothing visible to show whether Boudicca’s followers ransacked the house on their way through. A strange, oppressive silence hangs over the whole atrium, and although it’s her own house, Serena still treads cautiously.

This house isn’t as ornate as the villa in town. There are no mosaics or paintings on the walls, no gold leaf encrusting the lararium, no marble floors or pillars. It’s still built in the Roman style, but simpler, smaller; more like the older houses in the Latium country that the wealthy families of Rome still keep as a sign of their families’ origins and progress. In a British context, outside of the wealthiest district in Londinium, it’s on the larger side of average. 

Now, though, after everything Serena’s experienced over the preceding weeks, it feels like a palace. She walks around the atrium pool, trailing one hand in the stale waters, and remembers with a wince how adamant she’d been a few summers ago that the villa needed a complete overhaul. How small and poky she’d thought it was; how huge it feels now. 

They reach the atrium’s back wall, where a small wooden door is set into the whitewashed brick. Serena twists the handle and pushes. No luck; the door doesn’t budge. She groans, kicking the bottom of the door with the side of her sandal. Out of the corner of her eye, she can just about glimpse Berenice’s grin, so she stands back and issues her with a challenging gaze. Berenice’s grin grows wider, but obligingly she crouches down, glances through the keyhole to check whether the door is locked, and sets her shoulder against the wood. She glances down to the handle to check that she’s holding the tongue of the lock down, braces her other hand against the door, and then heaves, strength driving upwards from her legs into the door, which opens precipitously, sending her tumbling into the next room. 

Berenice recovers her balance with a quick one-two step, nimble like she’s dancing, and she turns around to glance back at Serena with a smile. Her eyes are crinkled up at the corners and she’s beaming, and it’s all Serena can do to stop herself wrapping her arms around this woman and never letting go. Instead she kisses her briefly, casually, at the side of her mouth, and slides one hand to the small of Berenice’s back as they turn to look at the room.

Serena knows the likelihood of anyone hiding out in the house - apart from them - is minimal, but she still feels her shoulders relax when she glances around the room to find it empty except for a stack of boxes, piled haphazardly in the middle of the floor. She walks over and opens them, to discover that they’re filled with her business accounts, written neatly on tablets. Likewise, when she moves across that room to open the other door in a side wall, the kitchen and the sleeping rooms and, finally, the garden are all vacant. Just like the road they’d walked through the forest, they’re the only rebels left, and all the hiding places are empty.

Walking through the garden at the back of the house, Serena glances sideways. Beside her, Berenice is a solid, comforting presence, although her blonde hair is nearly covering her face, moving slightly in the breeze, and she seems a little overwhelmed. 

Serena comes to a stop. “Hey,” she says, free hand on Berenice’s shoulder, and Berenice glances up. 

“It’s bigger than I thought,” Berenice mumbles, sounding awed.

“It’s bigger than I remember,” Serena replies, and glances up at Berenice, the beginnings of laughter on her lips.

Berenice glances down at their hands, still clasped together. “It feels like you, though,” she says, so quietly Serena finds herself unconsciously leaning closer. “I like it.”

“I was thinking I’d stay,” Serena says, eventually. “I was thinking I could start up the wine business again, maybe buy some land near here and start our own vineyard. What do you think? Would you - would you stay?”

“Yes,” Berenice says immediately, eyes wide and locked on Serena’s. “But… if I’m ever found, if the Romans ever realise I supported Boudicca…” 

Serena’s eyes narrow, and she nods. “You’ll have to disappear.” 

“I don’t - ” Berenice clears her throat. “I don’t want to, not now I’ve found you.”

“No!” Serena exclaims, pulling away from Berenice to pace a few steps about the garden. “No, I meant you’ll have to disappear legally. We’ll change your name, tell everyone you’re a friend from somewhere else, you’re staying with me for a while.”

“I’m a friend from Gaul,” Berenice says hesitantly, leaning against the house wall. “I came over to help you with the business after you were injured. Maybe I could set up an apothecary business too, in a few months. I used to know a little about medicine.”

“Brilliant,” Serena says, wandering back to stand in front of Berenice by the wall. “You’ll have your apothecary business, I’ll have the wine business. We could be unstoppable, you and I.” 

Berenice smiles as Serena gazes up at her, her dear face surrounded by a cloud of pale hair as the light shines and catches in it. She’s never looked more beautiful or more otherworldly than she does at this moment, and Serena’s heart catches in her throat for a second before Berenice’s arms wind tightly around her waist and pull her close. They kiss, tentatively at first and then more passionately, and it’s the realisation that she really is this inestimably lucky, that she’ll have this for the rest of her life, that causes Serena to groan, suddenly overwhelmed, into Berenice’s mouth. 

Berenice tears her mouth away even as her hands are busily grappling with the intricate folds of Serena’s dress. “Is there a bedroom here?” 

“No,” Serena mumbles. “Just…” She’s distracted by the soft skin behind Berenice’s ear, and several moments are lost before she says, “Here’s fine, just - just touch me, Berenice.” 

Berenice’s groan and her triumphant grin when she finds the opening to Serena’s dress and pulls it open start a fire in Serena’s belly. Abruptly, Berenice flips them so Serena’s back is against the wall, and suddenly she’s so aroused she can barely concentrate. Time feels like it’s slipping and pulling like silk around her. Clarity comes in flashes: Berenice’s mouth on her collarbone and hands on her breasts; her thigh, taut between Berenice’s legs and her hands in Berenice’s hair, holding her tight to herself like she’ll never let her go. Berenice kissing her way down her stomach as her head slips back against the wall; the harsh sound of her breath in the quiet garden; Berenice’s long fingers sliding against her as she pants against Berenice’s neck; her own fingers slick against Berenice’s clitoris as they rock together, climbing higher and higher as together they pursue that unending spiral of pleasure - 

The sound of Berenice’s climax, loud in the silence, and then her own unabashed gasp of “Berenice!” as she reaches her own climax and Berenice’s arms tighten around her in sympathetic relief. 

They melt together, trading lazy, open-mouthed kisses until Berenice stirs herself, pulling her hand away with visible reluctance. It’s ineluctably flattering, as is the way Berenice’s dark eyes lick over her body like fire, exposed beneath her open dress, as she licks her hand clean. Serena is tempted to lean forward for another round when her stomach audibly rumbles, and she pauses, mouth halfway to Berenice’s. There’s a long pause. 

“I’m starving,” Serena admits. 

“So am I.” Berenice grimaces. “We should, uh.” 

“There’s food in the bag from that woman.”   
“Alright.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is why this fic is marked M. Uhh, finally.   
> (I was going to post this an hour ago and then I had to log back on to my work computer to do some more stuff there, so... here, have a belated chapter.) One more chapter to go!!
> 
> Thank you as always for the lovely comments <3


	10. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Serena and Berenice settle into the summer house; the future is right there, close enough to touch.

Three weeks later. 

Serena’s cotton tunic whispers against her legs as she walks out the back door into the garden. It’s a beautifully warm day, with barely a cloud in the sky, and she’s carrying a jug of cool water and glasses out to where Berenice is sitting, casually sprawled at the base of an old apple tree. Beside her is a stack of wax tablets which contain the remaining accounts from the winery, and a second stack of blank ones. 

“I think, if you wanted, you could buy forty acres of vineyard land near here and plant it this season or next,” Berenice says, looking up from her tablet and accepting a glass of water with a smile. 

“You think?” Serena replies, sitting down nearby and placing a tablet on her lap. “What about the rebuild we’ll have to do in Londinium?”

“You don’t have bottling facilities to repair, only the warehouse outside Londinium,” Berenice replies, “and there’s no reason we couldn’t store your next shipment here in the interim. It’ll depend on what your banker says, when we get in contact with him, but according to these, you’d have enough money to buy a hundred acres, if you wanted.”

“If he’s still alive,” Serena says, and a cloud passes across Berenice’s face.

They sit in silence for a few moments, companionably sipping their water. Serena can feel the sunlight beating down on her bare legs. She moves her shoulder, experimentally, and today the pain is barely a twinge. Every night before they sleep, Berenice has taken to rubbing an ointment of her own concoction into the scar. It’s full of healing herbs: yarrow and uva ursi and garlic, for its antibacterial qualities. She’ll take the scar with her to the underworld when it’s finally her time, but thanks to Berenice, it won’t ache in winter or pull painfully when she moves. It’s an incredible gift Berenice has given her, second only to the gift of Berenice’s presence in her life, and in her most private moments Serena thinks she won’t ever stop being grateful. 

“What are you smiling at?” Berenice asks, glancing up from her tablet. 

“You,” Serena replies, plainly, and, like she does every time Serena makes her regard plainly known, Berenice blushes and smiles. 

“How are your plans for the apothecary stall?” Serena asks, as Berenice takes a sip of her water. 

Berenice’s eyebrows raise above her glass, and she swallows hastily. “I was thinking of using one or two of the acres we’d buy near here to plant the herbs I’d need. I’d start small at first, but perhaps when you talk with Gavrus I could inquire about the price of rent in the forum.” 

“You could store your products in the warehouse,” Serena says casually, focusing a little too hard on the tablet on her lap. “Once you build up a big enough clientele, perhaps.” She glances sideways at Berenice, whose smile is incredulous but growing. 

“Are you sure?” Berenice asks. 

“Of course,” Serena says. “I own that warehouse, it wouldn’t even cost me in extra rent. You’re welcome to however much of it you want.” 

Berenice looks starry-eyed for a moment, and she leans closer to Serena, kissing her softly on the side of her mouth, and Serena’s heart melts a little more every moment she spends with Berenice. She sinks into Berenice’s touch, and for a moment the world fades away. 

When they part, after a few attenuated moments, Serena rests her head on Berenice’s shoulder, breathing in the unique scent that always surrounds Berenice, acutely aware of the warm collarbone beneath her cheek. She gazes out at the garden, bounded by its high wooden fence and wreathed in wild vines. Berenice reaches for her hand, resting on Berenice’s knee, and twines their fingers together. 

“I know we’ll have to go back to Londinium at some point,” Serena murmurs, and the garden is so quiet it feels like she’s in a dream. “But not quite yet, I think.” 

Beside her, Serena feels Berenice smile, slow and languid, and her fingers tighten around Serena’s as she says, “Not right now, but soon, perhaps. In another few weeks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow it has been a LONG time since I updated (sorry!!!). Thank you to everyone who's shown this little story love over the last few months, it's been an absolute joy to write (apart from the bits where I got writers' block aha). I will hopefully be back soon with my lawyers' AU (aka The One Where Berena Are Important Commercial Barristers In London [and have a lot of hate!sex that turns into real!sex that turns into feelings]). So much love to all of you <3


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